Java synchronization primitives and it's ability to flip bits incur heavy performance penalty when compared to native onesI think your knowledge on this might be a bit out of date. If you look at the Unsafe class (in old versions of Java) or the VarHandle class in newer versions, you can implement synchronisation and bit flipping with the same efficiency as Delphi, indeed it compiles down to optimal machine code.
You are also free to point me to a good DirectX framework in Java and/or the one that let's you write Directshow and Media Foundation filters and graphs as well.
Well, you can do this, albeit nobody really does because Java code tries culturally to be cross platform so using DirectX would be an odd thing for it to do. There are COM frameworks that let you write COM objects in Java. Whether you can do high performance image processing does depend on whether the JITC auto-vectorises though, at least until the vector API ships.
But you can for instance instantiate a JavaFX video player and then apply hw accelerated effects to it. Writing your own image filters would these days be best done in shader languages or lots of AVX anyway, so neither Delphi nor Java would really be appropriate for that.
Windows desktop: sorry I'll choose Delphi any time.
Yes, if you want to specifically write a Windows-only desktop app (that isn't WPF/WinUI/the new stuff I guess) and use lots of Win32 specific APIs, then Delphi is going to be better at that. On this we fully agree.
Still, these days people mostly want to write for at least Windows and macOS if not also Linux. And then you can write a good desktop app with JavaFX and the java packager tool (with native installers and the general appearance of a themed Windows app).
FWIW I used Delphi for years in the 1990s, even wrote a 3D video game with it in OpenGL. I've also written cross platform desktop apps with Java/JavaFX. So I have a lot of experience of both to compare them against. Delphi was fantastic at the time, and I still sometimes point out to people how the web platform fails to compare to even Delphi 2 + Windows 95 in many ways. I don't think we're really so far apart. But times have changed and Delphi wins only if you compare it to the web.