The previous version also dropped in performance? That is super weird. Here's what I would try first: delete the version you've been working with, perform a restart, and then download the latest version and give it another try. If its impacting previous versions there is either something not right with your machine or there might be a memory leak somewhere that I need to hunt down. I have reached out to the Game Maker community as well to see if anyone can shed light on the issue.
Yes, 21-27 FPS is not normal. It should be running at close to 60, ideally. On lower end machines I normally see it run between 55-60 FPS.