If you go to The Demos >> Grid View >> Performance >> Load 50,000 rows. And then drag the group to group by the first two columns, then editing cells is slow.
As an aside, my slowdown occurs with 1800 items and grouped by only one (1) column. Here's hoping it's the same issue. Grid is also filtered (1-2 columns) and sorted (1 column).
associated forum link http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/winforms/gridview/gridview-performance-with-grouping-very-slow.aspx