Thanks. As a former comp. sci. prof, I love doing this stuff.

Your RAM is fine. Your soundcard rate: RealTek is about the worst soundcard out there, and is typical in these basic laptops. ASIO4ALL was suggested; it might give you an improvement and is worth a try. You could do even better with an external USB soundcard, even say a basic Focusrate 2i2 or 2i4. You could then run at the correct sample rate. However, I don't think the sample rate has anything to do with your immediate problem; that's plain old CPU horsepower and we've given you a few suggestions to deal with it. All these other things are minor in comparison.

BIAB 2024 Win Audiophile. Software: Studio One 6.5 Pro, Swam horns, Acoustica-7, Notion 6; Win 11 Home. Hardware: Intel i9, 32 Gb; Roland Integra-7, Presonus Studio 192, Presonus Faderport 8, Royer 121, Adam Sub8 & Neumann 120 monitors