"Cycles can be fast. Competitively fast in fact. But you have to know how to tweak it.
In the words of Thomas Dinges (developer), “The Internal rendering engine was built for speed, but if you wanted realism you had to turn stuff on. Cycles is the other way round. It’s built for realism, and if you want it fast you have to turn stuff OFF.” (said during a conversation at the 2012...