Not much beats urxvt, but even gnome-terminal beats ansi-term.
urxvt:
real 0m0.314s
user 0m0.080s
sys 0m0.040s
gnome-terminal:
real 0m1.228s
user 0m0.090s
sys 0m0.040s
ansi-term:
real 0m6.493s
user 0m0.150s
sys 0m0.030s
Also, ls --color=auto really messes up ansi-term. It glitches all over the place and I think treats some color codes as carriage returns or other motion commands for some reason.
urxvt: real 0m0.314s user 0m0.080s sys 0m0.040s
gnome-terminal: real 0m1.228s user 0m0.090s sys 0m0.040s
ansi-term: real 0m6.493s user 0m0.150s sys 0m0.030s
Also, ls --color=auto really messes up ansi-term. It glitches all over the place and I think treats some color codes as carriage returns or other motion commands for some reason.