I just blocked my new Mac mini with Topaz and can’t do anything else with AI.
So I was thinking that I will buy like 4 GPU Intel system and run 4 tasks on it. Perhaps Stable Diffusion or whatever future comes up with.
But I’m really confused about CPU utilization if I get for example 64 core CPU.
Can you work on some system that you later present as recommended for that kind of multitasking?
The CPU is used more by the app to handle basic tasks like the file management, running the UI. The GPU is where the main processing tasks are done and that will not really change with more CPU cores available.
However having more CPU cores will help with a lot of other tasks on the system when running other apps or programs. They will not be a main driver of performance in Topaz when actually running the AI processing tasks.
Are you looking at buying for separate computer systems to run one instance of the app on each or a PC system with 4 GPU cards in it? To run a multi-GPU setup in one system you would need to upgrade to the Pro license to utilize that in an effective way. However, running 4 separate computers would require purchasing an additional individual license so that you would have access to 4 seats for the app to be installed on all 4 computers, since each license comes with 2 seats.
Running those 4 separate systems would mean you could process 4 files at once at whatever processing speeds the hardware could handle.
It makes more sense I think in general to get one computer with 4 GPUs and run 4 separate tasks on it than 4 smaller separate computers.
And I think you should think about it this way in development, because all the tasks are just very time consuming.
So the question is if it is (for example) 64 core CPU if each TVAI task will use different set of CPU cores. Like with GPU 1 cores 1-8, GPU 2 cores 9-16 etc.
Also makes more sense to buy 4 Intel GPUs with 16GB VRAM as they are really cheap and running 4 tasks at once kind of compensate Intel GPU is slower.
Another argument for supercomputer like this is for me the availability of the horsepower anytime I need it. Than 4 average PCs that are just average PCs.
And it is easy to buy in future just better GPUs and replace them if Intel ones become too slow.
I was asking Perplexity regarding these questions and basically Mac mini M4Pro I have now, can do some work in following years, while the tasks will probably never get significantly faster in future if you are interested in latest quality.
So slower multitasking makes more sense to me than 1 task highend PC as the best GPU can get very expensive.
