Just checked in v2.6
with CPU:

Epoch 2/25
352/352 [==============================] - 0s 1ms/step - loss: 0.3787 - accuracy: 0.8329 - val_loss: 0.4108 - val_accuracy: 0.8136

with GPU:

Epoch 2/25
352/352 [==============================] - 2s 5ms/step - loss: 0.3806 - accuracy: 0.8317 - val_loss: 0.4102 - val_accuracy: 0.8152

Well at least it’s faster with the CPU, not like in v2.5 
Any idea of what’s happening?
I’m using v2.5 because I’m preparing the tensorflow certification exam and it is the version they ask to use.