Rendering inefficiency or awesomeness?

Over the past 2 years I've been caught in the delusional thinking that must choose between FumeFX and Afterburn for explosions and fire effects, but I've come to the realization that each program has it's specific uses and purpose. FumeFX is best for close shots of fire, and for simulating the liquid properties of fire. Afterburn is best for big, detailed, distance shots of explosions and rely on particles rather than a simulation.

The problem with Afterburn, is when I finally get good looking (and animating) results, my render-times skyrocket. The problem with FumeFX is that it likes to think it's running out of memory and crash, and good looking simulations take up many gigs of space. Plus with FumeFX, the physical space for your simulations are restricted to a pre-made box (and bigger means more processing), while Afterburn is limited to whatever you can do in PFlow, which is a lot.

I am currently rendering a test animation of some Afterburn explosions, and my render times are upwards of 3-4 minutes per frame. And at 400 frames, it's gonna take a while. I don't like waiting to see that I screwed up something and I'm going to have to render again. But I guess that's the biz.