This might not only be GUI vs cli, it can just be down to the granularity of your client mapping - if the p4 server thinks it needs to lock across large regions

This might not only be GUI vs cli, it can just be down to the granularity of your client mapping - if the p4 server thinks it needs to lock across large regions of depots it can go into the weeds. I always try to have the absolute minimum in my client specs, but sometimes you do need to operate over the world. The perforce docs are generally well written, worth looking at them.