I would figure out if it's can.Map or the live binding that's the performance problem. Put a timer around where the map gets created and one around where the view is rendered. Which is slower?
If the rendering is slow ... start using stache in 2.1.
If the map conversion is slow, 2.1 might make it better b/c can.Map has lazy bubbling. If just switching doesn't improve things, you can look into LazyMap if you have an object with many properties, but you are not reading all the properties. Finally, with the define plugin (in 2.1), you can tell some properties not to convert to can.Map