Any chance you can try with a different scene that you can share?
I don’t know about the $1 version but with the regular E-Cycles 2021 I get about twice the speed.
So far I only had one case where it’s been difficult for me to get fast renders, but it is indeed a particular case: Hard Surface animated piece - #10 by phoe-nix-art
Dark environment, mesh emitter, and glass. That said, it went down from 25min to 15/17min per frame, not exactly half but still a significant gain.
Mathieu tested the scene, and he had some tips on how to improve it a little further but, unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to move forward with the project.