Can you put some detail in term of what type of simulation that you run Quartus and ModelSim. Is it Quartus functional simulation vs. ModelSim behavior ? Or you're running ModelSim with netlist generated from Quartus ?
Another reason that can slow down the simulator is glitches.
Do you get any glitches detected warning from Quartus? If yes, you might want to turn on the glitch filtering option on. This is if you're running timing simulation (post fit simulation)
Also to answer the previous question - if you just want to check your code syntax, then the elaboration option is the correct one. If you actually want to run functional simulation - basic netlist simulation without going through full compilation, then you should select the functional simulation option from Process|Tools dialog box. Then click on the generate functional netlist button. The generated netlist is an optimized netlist for simulation purpose.