For tables containing 100s K records and 10s of columns full text search can be a bottle neck.
Search specific fields can be enabled via Filter Row:
This adds a filter row to the top of the table that allows to filter each column individually:
Default matching operator is “Begins With”.
To change that behaviour your admin needs to dig into the application model:
This makes filter options menu appear alongside each filter cell:
Overall speed of searching depends on many factors: your database and server set up, complexity of data, your views configuration, fields and objects configuration.