is there a way to speed up water rendring?

[Nala1977]

Hey guys its always been a problem for me, rendering water
like the whole image terrain wise, even if its super complicated with lots of compute nodes takes maximum 30 minutes while the water part with a bit of transparency takes over 7 hours...i mean is there any parameter that can be adjusted to speed up the rendering of water?

[WAS]

A method I use is merging with a non-transparent surface where you don't see any translucency further away from the camera with a distance shader. But not always good if reflections aren't right. 

[Dune]

I wish there were a method...

[Hannes]

Another thing I noticed that increases render times for water a lot is the viewing angle (even without using transparency). If you have a scene where you have a very flat angle to look at the water surface it takes a lot of time to compute the reflection as opposed to looking down at the water from above.