For any who may still be having this problem (as I have been the last 4-5 days) and find this thread, I thought I would share what just worked for me.
Realized my game that can't even come close to putting a strain on my PC hardware was suddenly dropping FPS to about 10-20. I restarted and noticed that Windows 10 was dragging on the start-up, slow to log in, seeing the login screen which normally doesn't
even display and taking about 4-5x longer to get into Windows than normal as if the CPU was being overloaded. I checked task manager's performance tab and saw that my CPU speed was at 0.76 GHz. Keeping the window open, I tried a few things and found that
it was not going over that amount. A full shutdown did not fix this.
What I did find odd was that the issue seemed to be pretty sporadic, coming and going seemingly regardless of what I was doing on my PC, except for if I happened to run a program - in other words the PC wouldn't drop to 0.76 if it was at max speed to begin
with unless I ran a game. I also noticed that it was affecting even the BIOS splash screen speed after rebooting. Windows doesn't have anything to do with that.
In researching the issue I found that the problem exists outside of Windows. I looked in the BIOS and found that my CPU said "0.80GHz (100mhz x 8 cycles)" or something like that. The offending board type is the MSI M series, M3-5-7-etc... which is what
I have.
This thread sums it up, specifically 'Reply #5'. In following the recommendation here, I've not had a problem with the CPU speed dropping below 4.65GHz ever since (reset the CMOS - look up how to do so for your board - and disabled Adaptive Thermal Monitor
in the BIOS).
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=270601.0
If you have a different mobo type, you may wish to see if your board has its own version of a slow mode switch. According to this info, these switches tend to malfunction and the only way to fix it is to replace the board or disable the part of the BIOS
that pays attention to it, which is explained at that link.
Hopefully this fixes the problem for some and that eventually MSI comes out with a BIOS update to fix the issue (have they?? If someone knows please correct me).