Emacs with git slow?

[S Boucher]

finding and saving files (C-xC-f and C-xC-s) that are under git control is slow 
on my system.

It's of the order of a second, which is terrible.

Anyone noticed this?

I see this slow response time even when I start emacs -nw -q.

Things are snappy with files not under git.

I haven't dug in the emacs git code yet, and am hoping I won't have to :-)