What is the fastest way to read a variable number of lines of text from a serial port as a response to a serial port write?

I have a text based debug serial port set up where I write out the serial port a text command (for example): 'mr 44a00100 10' (memory read starting at 44a00100 for 10(hex) addresses)

Then, the system spits out a variable number of lines of text as a response, (for the above example):

 mr 44a00100 10

    Addr 0x44a00100 = 0x00000000
    Addr 0x44a00104 = 0x00000001
...
    Addr 0x44a00138 = 0x00000000
    Addr 0x44a0013c = 0x00000000

The way I have the function written it takes about 1.7 seconds to get the serial_port.BytesAvailable above 25. However, if I use TeraTerm, the response comes back with all of the lines right away, so I know it's not my system.

here's my code snippet:

        serial_port = serial('COM5');
        fopen(serial_port);
        serial_port.BaudRate = 115200;
        serial_port.Terminator = 'CR/LF';
        cmd_str = 'mr 44a00100 10';
        out_array = cell(100,1);  % less than 100 lines of text for each command
        fprintf(serial_port, cmd_str); 
        p = 1;
        tic
        while (serial_port.BytesAvailable < 25)  
            pause(.01)
            p = p+1;
        end
        p
        toc
        % for some reason it takes about 1.5 seconds to
        % even though when using teraterm the data comes back right away.
        i=1;
        while(serial_port.BytesAvailable > 0)
            out_str = fgetl(serial_port);    % get the line without the terminator
            out_array{i} = [out_str '\n'] ;  % use this terminator to display instead of 'CR/LF'
            i=i+1;  % keep track of the number of lines of data
        end
        for j=1:i
            % display the data outtside of the loop that reads it 
            fprintf(char(out_array{j}));
        end
 ...

with the above example cmd_str, I get: p = 99 Elapsed time is 1.518110

Is there any way to get matlab to gather the data faster?

Thanks, Tim.