Arguably the cost effective solution is to use cloud services, since we're talking just a few seconds difference (or you might be lucky like one HN reader who g

Arguably the cost effective solution is to use cloud services, since we're talking just a few seconds difference (or you might be lucky like one HN reader who got allocated an A100 today.) But to play devil's advocate there are clear strengths available to the different platforms. PCs can readily upgrade into high end GPUs, but the compromise is that this becomes a requirement as basic GPUs don't feature enough VRAM and CPU-only mode is woeful. On the mac side of things, the GPU is not going to be the latest and greatest, but the M-series features unified memory, so a relatively normal M-series mac is going to have the necessary hardware to load the models. Not the fastest (but still fast), and ready to go. (Also as it stands the M-series can offer additional pathways to optimisation.)