Search withOUT filtering?

I've noticed how insanely fast Searching is with Filtering.. what I really need is a "scroll to" search capability that is equally fast.

Unfortunately, searching filters, which my customer doesn't want.

Is there a way to take advantage of that speed without trimming down the dataset? The set can be as big as around 1500 rows.. and we're required to support IE8 (read: speed issue is here).

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

Tom