It does sound like a non-typical behaviour as I remember rendering hundreds of sprites multiple times, resulting in only a few draw-calls and ~144 FPS on an i7 processor and NVidia 1050.

What I suggest doing is -

1. try looking at the DesktopLauncher.java and see if there's a config parameter that might affect the framerate - such as vsync.

2. try rendering the texture many times and no times at all to see how it affects the frame rate.

3. try removing any fps cap to see how it performs unrestricted.

Good luck and consider posting your findings