Rendering a Track With FX

You already answered you own question: Bounce to track is the most preferred (?) method, Freeze is another.
Also, Apply FX is possible, but not recommendable, because you'll lose the original track.
I read it you're not willing to use Bounce. If so, why?

As others have said, use the freeze function. It looks like a snowflake icon on the track.

If CPU hit is the primary concern, the counterpoint to bouncing a track(s) is to also archive the original(s). Archiving will remove the track from CPU processing, because it requires the transport to be stopped to undo it. Operations that can be done "on the fly" typically have some CPU overhead going on in anticipation of it being changed while the transport is running.
 
Another thing to bear in mind is that some operations can be "baked in" and totally forgotten about. Noise reduction is a good example... there is no reason to continually process every sample in a track each pass when the desired effect is "permanent."
 
To Kalle's other point above, I have also seen posts of VST(i)s losing presets when being unfrozen; so a side comment to that is if you spend a lot of time working in a VST(i), then save the work in that VST(i) to a preset before freezing. Use a descriptive name when doing so, since it might be years from now that you realize that you need to recall it (such as "[song name] [track type]").

There are two bounces... "bounce to clip(s)" which you describe above, and "bounce to tracks(s)," which pops up a dialog with many options on it before doing. To lower CPU hit, you want to bounce to track(s) [highlight them and then select that in the "Tracks" menu at the top of the Track View]... when finished, Archive [the "A" button in the original track(s) you bounced]. This will bounce and also remove the track(s) you bounced from CPU usage (via the archiving).