Is it more efficient to wait or is there an efficient distance to travel?
For the purposes of resetting NPCs and respawning items, it can take—at most—up to 30 days (720 hours) of in-game time.
There is an option to wait and there is an option to fast travel. Each passes time. If I want to expedite the passage of time, such as in order to respawn a location, is it more efficient to wait or fast travel? If the latter, between whence and whereto? Between which two places is the most efficient?
I guess hard drive speed factors in.
Solution 1:
Tested on my system (Windows 8.1 Pro, AMD Phenom II X6 1075T (3GHz), 12GB RAM, GTX780, game and OS on same SSD), character was the default character the game gives you if you use coc command in main menu (full iron armour equipped).
Test results
Waiting
Waiting takes 22 seconds for every 20 hours, which would make waiting 720 hours take 13 minutes and 12 seconds.
Fast travelling
Fast travelling a long distance (Fort Dawnguard to Castle Volkihar1, including map navigation time) took 9.6 seconds and advanced the time by 32 and a half hours. That would make "waiting" 720 hours take a little under 4 minutes in total.
This makes travelling much faster option.
Waiting with tfc (PC only)
On PC you can use tfc console command to go into free camera mode. While in this mode, waiting is a lot faster with 20 hours taking just over 2 seconds! This way of waiting is the fastest option by far. This makes waiting 720 hours take just a minute and a half!
Slower processors and hard drives most likely favour waiting more, as do heavily modded games.
1I chose these 2 locations, because they're on the opposite sides of the map making the distance very long and both locations are surrounded by quickly loaded terrain, one being surrounded by water and the other by mountains.
Solution 2:
The longest fast-travel route, Markarth-Riften, takes 24 hours wearing light armour.
Which is quicker depends on how long the loading screen lasts. Waiting 24 hours takes about 30 seconds so if you can open the menu, fast travel and get through the loading screen faster, it's faster to do that.