I am sure all of you are aware of the “simulate while rendering feature” which can be useful to see your work render before you commit to a full sim but there is another technique that really cuts project testing times down.
If you are using a GPU sim, as you should be, you realise that your CPU is mostly idle. A sim frame can take a few seconds to sim on the GPU but maybe 30 secs to render on the CPU. So after a few frames have simmed simply start you render. The impact on the CPU and GPU is minimal and you have saved yourself so much time. If the sim fits into the GPU then fine if not keep an eye on it and when it is about to flip or you manually flip to the CPU stop your render before you do so. Then set the render range to start from the frame after and check "render when finished " to render the final frames.
The same idea works with a multi GPU setup and a GPU render engine. Set TFD to sim on one card and the other cards are dedicated renderers…
Oh…and keep your machine cool !!