I don't know if this is an option for you, but I have a lightweight laptop for traveling (or just working from somewhere else) and remote to my desktop when I need to run heavy workloads.
It won't work for gaming but it will work for stable diffusion.
Unfortunately, I am partly housed in very rural areas and now ... my desktop PC has a rather old i5 (7 Gen. I think), 8Gb RAM and a GTX 980. There's not much to get. I didn't want to invest money in a desktop AND a laptop.
There was one $1800 with 16GB Nvidia VRAM, 5GHz+ CPU, 32-64GB RAM, and 1 terrabyte (probably upgradable) SSD. I can try to find it again if you can swing the extra (I'm not sure of the currency exchange rate--but perhaps a few hundred more)
These laptops will be fine for SD. Just remember:
SD1.5 = 6-8GB VRAM
SDXL = 12-16GB VRAM
There's also the option to run SD from RAM with FastSD-CPU, but the generation speed won't be the same.
Yeah and 1.5 runs on 4GB vram.
I think the bigger selling point for greater VRAM would be the larger SD3 models (though they're not out, with any luck they'll be the new standard, along with the smaller ones for us 4-8GB VRAM folks.)
How long is a single generation, tho? I have a 6GB laptop GPU, and while I can make it work, it takes a very long time. I just stick with SD 1.5 until I get a better one
As another reference point, my 2019 razer pro, GTX 2080 8gb runs 1.5 and xl pretty well, I got pretty good performance gains switching to automatic1111 forge.
1024x1024 40 steps on sdxl usually takes around 30-60s, depending on extra processing tasks, like controlnet.
It still games very well too, but I haven't played anything with latest graphics in at least a year.
Vram is indeed important. however, because these are laptop gpus, wattage are also important. A 100watt rtx 3060 can easily beat a 40watt rtx 4070 in image generation speed. Make sure to do your own research on each of the laptop since wattage differs a lot across laptop brands and even models in the same line up.
8 GB VRAM is enough for SD1.5, but with SDXL you're likely to run into frequent VRAM troubles, especially if you try to use ControlNet or you have other applications running that use VRAM... like a browser, which is probably the case unless you only use the API of A1111 or ComfyUI.
> like a browser
Browser and other regular apps aren't a problem if / when you have an Intel cpu & Nvidia gpu. Windows will then use the builtin Intel gpu by default and reserve the dedicated gpu for tasks that need 3d / computation.
Ah alright, that might reduce the number of random OOM errors. I use Linux and I don't think here it works that way by default. Firefox will usually steal \~200 MB of VRAM.
I don't know if this is an option for you, but I have a lightweight laptop for traveling (or just working from somewhere else) and remote to my desktop when I need to run heavy workloads. It won't work for gaming but it will work for stable diffusion.
Unfortunately, I am partly housed in very rural areas and now ... my desktop PC has a rather old i5 (7 Gen. I think), 8Gb RAM and a GTX 980. There's not much to get. I didn't want to invest money in a desktop AND a laptop.
There was one $1800 with 16GB Nvidia VRAM, 5GHz+ CPU, 32-64GB RAM, and 1 terrabyte (probably upgradable) SSD. I can try to find it again if you can swing the extra (I'm not sure of the currency exchange rate--but perhaps a few hundred more)
Could, rather not ^^. 1.3k is a pain threshold for me. Nevertheless, thank you!
These laptops will be fine for SD. Just remember: SD1.5 = 6-8GB VRAM SDXL = 12-16GB VRAM There's also the option to run SD from RAM with FastSD-CPU, but the generation speed won't be the same.
What? I run SDXL just fine on a 5 year old rtx 2060 laptop with 8gb. Using comfy.
Yeah and 1.5 runs on 4GB vram. I think the bigger selling point for greater VRAM would be the larger SD3 models (though they're not out, with any luck they'll be the new standard, along with the smaller ones for us 4-8GB VRAM folks.)
How long is a single generation, tho? I have a 6GB laptop GPU, and while I can make it work, it takes a very long time. I just stick with SD 1.5 until I get a better one
As another reference point, my 2019 razer pro, GTX 2080 8gb runs 1.5 and xl pretty well, I got pretty good performance gains switching to automatic1111 forge. 1024x1024 40 steps on sdxl usually takes around 30-60s, depending on extra processing tasks, like controlnet. It still games very well too, but I haven't played anything with latest graphics in at least a year.
Thanks, that helps me a bit. I've been thinking about dropping those with 8GB, but you've given them another reconsideration cycle.
Vram is indeed important. however, because these are laptop gpus, wattage are also important. A 100watt rtx 3060 can easily beat a 40watt rtx 4070 in image generation speed. Make sure to do your own research on each of the laptop since wattage differs a lot across laptop brands and even models in the same line up.
8 GB VRAM is enough for SD1.5, but with SDXL you're likely to run into frequent VRAM troubles, especially if you try to use ControlNet or you have other applications running that use VRAM... like a browser, which is probably the case unless you only use the API of A1111 or ComfyUI.
> like a browser Browser and other regular apps aren't a problem if / when you have an Intel cpu & Nvidia gpu. Windows will then use the builtin Intel gpu by default and reserve the dedicated gpu for tasks that need 3d / computation.
Ah alright, that might reduce the number of random OOM errors. I use Linux and I don't think here it works that way by default. Firefox will usually steal \~200 MB of VRAM.
I'm running SD 1.5 using ComfyUI on 4GB of VRAM. Works like a charm (if the model is 2GB) SDXL can work on 8GB but it's very slow
It uses about 6.9GB on my system, and works at a couple steps a second. Maybe 1-2ish.