What you need to run Stable Diffusion XL

About Stable Diffusion XL

Stable Diffusion XL is an image generation model from Stability AI. Classic image model with thousands of community styles. Running it locally needs about 8 GB of memory.

Smallest Mac that runs it

The least memory you need, by Apple chip:

• M1: from 16 GB
• M1 Pro: from 16 GB
• M1 Max: from 32 GB
• M1 Ultra: from 64 GB
• M2: from 16 GB
• M2 Pro: from 16 GB
• M2 Max: from 32 GB
• M2 Ultra: from 64 GB
• M3: from 16 GB
• M3 Pro: from 18 GB
• M3 Max: from 36 GB
• M3 Ultra: from 96 GB
• M4: from 16 GB
• M4 Pro: from 24 GB
• M4 Max: from 36 GB
• M5: from 16 GB
• M5 Pro: from 24 GB
• M5 Max: from 36 GB

Graphics cards

Runs well on: RTX 3060 12GB, RTX 3080 10GB, RTX 3090, RTX 4060 Ti 16GB, RTX 4070 / 4070 Super, RTX 4070 Ti Super, RTX 4080 / 4080 Super, RTX 4090, RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, RTX 5070, RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5080, RTX 5090, Radeon RX 7800 XT, Radeon RX 9070 XT, Radeon RX 7900 XTX. Runs slowly with help from system RAM on: RTX 3070, RTX 4060, RTX 5060.

Hardware to run it

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• Smallest Mac: M5 with 16 GB. See it on Amazon
• Smallest graphics card: RTX 3080 10GB (10 GB). See it on Amazon
• Storage: image, video and voice models are large, and most people end up keeping several. A fast external SSD keeps your main drive free. See SSDs on Amazon

Lighter and heavier alternatives

• FLUX.2 klein 4B: needs about 10 GB, a heavier choice. Sharp, modern images and photo editing from a small model.
• Z-Image Turbo 6B: needs about 16 GB, a heavier choice. Great photo-real scenes in a few steps. Weak at writing text in images.

Questions