Are you doing any read/writes in code? If so, is any of it on background threads? About how many addresses are you accessing? Do you have multiple instances of the driver, like multiple forms with a driver on each form?
Even on really slow networks, 600ms should be easily handled. There may be something else in the code the driver doesn't agree with. The Modbus driver hasn't been upgraded yet to be thread safe, so there are situations that can give it problems.