Software Updates Sync is slow

Question

Hello,
We are seeing slow sync times for our 2012 SCCM Software Updates on the 2nd Tuesday of every month and I was wondering if anyone had any general insight as to why.  We notice that when compared side-by-side, the 2007 site can finish up to 30-45 minutes
sooner than the 2012 side.  On non-Patch Tuesdays, the sync seems to finish at the same time for the old and new sites.  
The major differences are:
We are downloading and making available all updates in 2012, where we were only downloading known required updates in 2007.  
We have our Software Update point assigned to our Primary site for 2012.  
Another difference we don't quite understand is the log for 2012 seems to be much larger and show a ton of Skipped updates because they are up to date.  The sync also seems to happen every day at 1pm and last for about 45 minutes.  Example log
entry:  
Skipped update c9d07481-cc99-4694-b2ff-96c5176d9045 - Q329115: Security Update (Windows 2000) because it is up to date.
SMS_WSUS_SYNC_MANAGER
4/29/2013 1:04:51 PM
5044 (0x13B4)
Some updates are shown as superseded or expired, so it does seem like this is probably an expected verification to make sure updates are kept current on the WSUS.  Should it take a long time?
Does any of this sound like an anomaly or that there might be something wrong with our sync process?  We feel like it is much more taxing and time consuming than in 2007 and we want to verify #1) if something is wrong and/or #2) if there are
things we can be doing to expedite and smooth this process.
I apologize if this is a bit broad and lacking of information, but we aren't sure where to start with troubleshooting this issue.
Thanks,
Ryan

Answer 1

We are syncing English language and then all the categories (Security Updates, Update Rollups, Service Packs, Tools, Feature Packs, Updates, Definition Updates, and Critical Updates)
on both the 2007 site and the 2012 site.  I don't see that we sync specific Products for either site, as we want everything to get pulled down for us to then manually test, filter, and deploy out to our organization.
I don't see any EULA errors in the 2012 site wsyncmgr.log file, but there are a few other errors.  Honestly, the errors can sometimes be random or not at all and the sync can
still take a long time.  Today it looks like our sync failed and re-ran itself due to a failed update.  I just checked it again and the latest sync appeared to go through without errors.
Ryan