Vim Scrolling Slowly

:set lazyredraw will buffer screen updates instead of updating all the time. I generally enable it when I'm doing a complex macro playback. Might help you here.

Have you tried the 'ttyfast' option? See:

:help 'ttyfast'

for help, and:

:set ttyfast

to enable it.

Also, what version are you using? And have you tried this with no customizations to see if something you've set is interfering?

Run it like this to omit any of your vimrc settings and plugins:

vim -u NONE

EDIT: If removal of customizations fixes it. Remove things iteratively until the behavior returns. Start by narrowing it down to either a vimrc problem or to plugins.

Regexp Recomputation Bug on Vim

Depending on the version of Vim you are using, you might be affected by a regexp recomputation bug, whose main culprits seem to be highlighting the cursor line and displaying relative line numbers:

set relativenumber
set cursorline

The web is scattered with threads reporting this issue (here, here and here). The issue seems to be exacerbated if one also uses syntax highlighting.

Personally I just solved my slow scrolling problems by disabling relativenumber by adding this to my vimrc:

set number

---

My Vim

My Vim is the one provided by the vim-nox package version 2:7.3.547-7 on Debian 7.9. Typing :version in Vim yields:

VIM - Vi IMproved 7.4 (2013 Aug 10, compiled Dec 11 2014 03:17:52)

Included patches: 1-488

I had this problem only when using the pylint.vim plugin with syntastic. The only thing I can find that's helpful (other than disabling the syntax checker) is to disable highlighting current line:

:set cul!

This sped up my scrolling significantly.