System slowness and graphics-card

[Todd Gruhn <tgruhn2%gmail.com@localhost>]

The system I am using was assembled and purchase back in Aug 2019.

Some things I noticed:
  1) The graphics card (nVidia GEFORCE GTX 1660)  needs to be booted using
      boot -c ; disable nouveau; quit
   2) When I compile a package -- and X Windows is NOT RUNNING -- this thing
       flies
   3) When I start X (using MWM) -- builds are extremely slow;
       When I do "su root" checking the root passwd takes about 3 minutes

Is there a connection between X, my graphics card, and system slowness?
Is there a way to fix this; or is it a matter of having support for my chip-set?

I find this interesting to know.