Have you looked into the javascript & css options, limits in the system settings?
The newest versions of modx are continue improving in speed [i.e. keep it updated to the latest]
Browsers will make a difference as well, I find Chrome is the fastest ~ I'm assuming it has the fastest javascript engine.
Other than that you should be able to customize the manager in such a way that you have a different administrative login for each context [each website] by creating admin users that only have access to each given context. You should be able to get lots of help for that one in the modx forums.
*EDIT***
There are several options in the manager that you can tweak/enable/disable that may help:
- Use Compressed CSS
- Use Compressed JavaScript Libraries
- Use Grouping When Compressing Javascript
- Maximum JavaScript Files Compressed
- Manager JS/CSS Compression Cache Age
Though most of these will already be 'optimized'
I think there is a way to disable the resource browser refreshing when you save as well, but I can't seem to find it now.
If your administration has already been restricted to different contexts I don't think you should even be able to see a resource that is not in the context you have access to. i.e. if you can still see other resources, then you still have ~some~ sort of access. It sounds to me like your problem is the time it takes for the resource browser to redraw, not the actual time it takes the server to process it [right?]