Particle systems can be very efficient. Modern ones are designed to be able to build this kind of shader from a GUI. If you don't use any kind of physical sim

Particle systems can be very efficient. Modern ones are designed to be able to build this kind of shader from a GUI. If you don't use any kind of physical simulation (and this doesn't), you wouldn't pay for it. You could build this same set up in a particle system and then have convenient knobs (like physics) to turn on for higher quality instances.