I’m undecided. I have a high-end PC, and I use it for both work and gaming. I bought Topaz a while ago. I’ve done a lot of upscaling, mainly from 480p to 1080p using Artemis LQ and 1080p to 2K/4K using Proteus with auto and custom settings. I’ve noticed that the temperatures are very high even when I’m using the GPU at 30/40% load.
CPU still constantly at 80-90% even if i choose GPU as AI processor
I was thinking of getting a Mac Studio M2 Max for upscaling and video editing. I wanted to know how you find it, and would you recommend sticking with the PC or switching to the Mac Studio? How do the fans perform with memory set at 100%?
I only have the base model Mac Studio M1 (Max) but I think the following applies to any Apple Silicon - when upscaling standard definition, the Mac’s resources, including memory, are grossly under-utilised. Perhaps one day Topaz will sort this out - or tell us why it’s beyond their control.
For upscaling HD and above, I’m pleased to say the Mac Studio’s GPU is almost fully utilised AND the fans remain barely audible. I can highly recommend the Macs Fan Control app which among its various controls, can reduce to the minimum fan speed from the Apple’s default 1300 rpm (slightly audible and irritating) to 1100 rpm - which I can’t hear.
You’ll get much slower encoding with the M2 Ultra than with your PC - about half the speed for what I guess are the most common tasks: 2x upscaling SD/HD/FHD material.
The Ultra 24c/60c is only a bit faster than a RTX 4060.
And with the current software there’s an issue with the Iris model making it really much slower than what would be possible on AppleSilicon. But since we had higher speeds until shortly I do believe that this can be solved.
So in terms of speed you will lose quite something but you get a stable and fully usable system even when long encodes are running as TVAI doesn’t seem to stress the CPU only nearly as much as on PC hardware.
For normal office/webbrowsing,… tasks you don’t notice that TVAI is running in the background, no sluggishness or something.
And while the fans do turn on they stay at moderate speeds. Power consumption also is better with Apple Silicon
If you can live with encodes taking at least twice the time and the rig being more expensive but want a responsive system during long encodes that’s not turning fans into an aeroplane and uses less power (yes, even taking the longer time into account) then you can go the Mac way.
P.S. if you could get hands on a cheap M1ultra I guess this would be a valuable option as well as the differences between M1 and M2 aren’t really that big.
With the M3 this could of course change.
