Well, the performance meter is a bit different between C11 and C12, I don’t know whether they’re exactly comparable…
I would expect higher peaks with record enabled, because it moves the track from the high buffer ASIO guard queue to the realtime, low buffer queue which uses more CPU (depending on the patch in question and the ASIO buffer size of your interface).
Edit: I’ve just seen another thread where some people experience performance problems with asio guard and synths, so it might of course also be that: Cubase 12 Upgrade ASIO-Guard Issue - #20 by dlion16