Iris does seem faster to me compared to Proteus. Didn't see much use for me from like Gaia compared to Proteus. I convert down resolution with Handbrake with a pretty high quality target for h264 and then run it again in topaz with Proteus. 4x with Iris, than resolution back down by 4 and then 4x back up with Proteus. I feel like Iris + Proteus gives a real good result for low resolution content