I’m trying GNOME now in TW, but I don’t like it. I can’t say it for sure, but it feels slow. Some apps are freezing. Even typing here is kind of slow. KDE seems more optimized. I think KDE is a better choice, at least in terms of speed.
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Ultimately, it depends on what you’re doing and what your system configuration is.
I’ve used GNOME for years, and haven’t had any issues with performance. KDE is also known to be somewhat resource-heavy, but again, depends on what you’re doing.
If your system is under-spec (low memory, slower CPU), you might look at a lightweight desktop like Cinnamon, FVWM, or something similar to that. They don’t have all the bells and whistles that KDE Plasma and GNOME have, but those bells and whistles take up resources, and if you’re resource-constrained, getting rid of those is going to help.
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Long time ago I was using Ubuntu Studio, a distro made for artist. It was XFCE from the beginning, but they switched to KDE. I imagine it was not for beauty. GNOME looks more minimalistic, so it supposed to be much faster. KDE looks more heavy, and it supposed to be much slower. But for me is the other way around.
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If it works for you and you like it, then that’s what you should use. Desktop Environment choice is a personal one, and having choices available means you can use the one you like and others can use the ones they like.
Having the choice is a wonderful thing. Arguing about “which is better” is like trying to figure out what the “best color” is, or “best tasting food” is. There is no “best” - only what is “best” for you.
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In my humble opinion it is a sign of bloat when the desktop environment requires hardware acceleration.
So don’t use it. Use something you like.
This is topic for general chat, not for technical support area.
Fair point. Moved. 
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When it came time to move from KDE, I chose Xfce. Very snappy, very stable.
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I use xfce on a daily basis as my main DE. In one of my tumbleweed with xfce I installed SDDM, kwin_x11 and plasma_ x11 session. The only additional qt application is convertall and krita as I already have application installed in xfce. The memory usage between the two is comparable. I look at it a while ago and xfce is using 1.1GB Ram at login and plasma_x11 is using 1.2GB Ram. When running application eg: blender it looks like it is more snappier than xfce. Just my two cents. 
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Test out several DE’s and use what works best for you. I used Gnome and it didn’t suit my workflow. I liked Cinnamon and MATE, they actually were just as fast as XFCE on my machine. KDE seemed different than it was about a decade ago with the bloat. Switched and kept using it without issue.
Although I’m not much a fan of them, test out some tiling managers as well.
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