Video cards for the Stable Diffusion under 1250 eur/usd

Girl with video-card

Here is a note about video cards for use with Stable Diffusion and some of their characteristics that need to be taken into account for good generation speed.

Long story short, I have a GeForce GTX 1660 Super, which is too slow for playing around with Stable Diffusion. Generating a basic 512×512 image with the SD1.5 model takes around 20–30 seconds – not too bad. However, when using inpaint mode, the time increases to several minutes. It’s fine for experimentation but requires a lot of waiting. So, I decided to review the market to understand what is currently available (as of February 2025) within my budget. Like most people, I don’t want to overspend, so I set my budget limit at 1,250 euros (roughly the same in USD).

The first step was to determine the key characteristics to consider when researching video cards.

First of all, I prefer Nvidia, so I didn’t look at AMD.

The key factors include:

  • Generation (e.g., 3xxx vs. 4xxx)
  • VRAM amount (8GB – 24GB)
  • VRAM frequency
  • CUDA core count
  • GPU clock speed
  • Other factors: card size, number of ports, number of fans, LED backlighting, power consumption, etc.

And, of course, the king – price.

My current video card

Here are the specs of my current GPU:

  • Name: GeForce GTX 1660 Super
  • Generation: 16xx
  • VRAM: 6GB GDDR6
  • VRAM frequency: 14GHz
  • CUDA Cores: 1408
  • GPU clock speed: 1.53GHz

What do we need for Stable Diffusion?

  • VRAM – This is used to load models and process images. The VRAM consumption during image processing depends on resolution – higher resolutions require more VRAM.
    • SD1.5 (with a 2GB model file) easily maxes out my 6GB VRAM when generating 512×512 images.
    • SDXL needs even more since the model itself is around 6GB. The recommended minimum for SDXL is likely 12GB, given that it was trained on 1024×1024 images.
  • CUDA Cores – More cores directly affect generation speed.
    • For example, if my current card has 1,408 CUDA cores and a new one has 4,500, I can expect roughly 3× faster generation – cutting the time from 20 seconds to about 7 seconds (or even faster).
  • Generation – Each new GPU generation introduces better technology, higher memory bandwidth, and improved efficiency.
    • Choosing a newer generation is always preferable if all other specs are comparable.

GPUs that fit my requirements

I checked amazon.it and found the following cards that match my filter. I also included some top and popular cards like 3090, just for comparison:

Model, Nvidia RTXVRAM DDR6x marked with xCuda coresCuda cores, x from 1660VRAM freqGPU freqAvg Price, eur
GTX 1660 Super6GB – 614081.0014 Gbps1.53 Ghz250
3060Ti8GB – 648643.4514 Gbps1.41 Ghz450
4060Ti8GB – 643523.0918 Gbps2.54 Ghz500
306012GB – 635842.5515 Gbps1.32 Ghz300
308012GB – 6x87046.1819 Gbps1.44 Ghz1000
407012GB – 6x58884.1821 Gbps2.47 Ghz650
507012GB – 761444.3628 Gbps2.51 Ghz780
4070 Super12GB – 6x71685.0921 Gbps1.98 Ghz850
4070Ti12GB – 6x76805.4621 Gbps2.47 Ghz1200
4060Ti16GB – 6x43523.0918 Gbps2.54 Ghz550
5070Ti16GB – 7x76805.4532 Gbps2.67 Ghz1100
408016GB – 6x97286.9123 Gbps2.51 Ghz2200
309024 GB – 6104967.4519.5 Gbps1.4 Ghz1900
3090Ti24 GB – 6107527.6421 Gbps1.86 Ghz2800

As you can see, the most balanced card is the RTX 4070 Super, which will be approximately 5× faster than my GTX 1660 based on the number of CUDA cores alone. Another more efficient and modern option is the RTX 5070 Ti, but its price is 30% greater, which isn’t worth it if we’re only talking about SD and have a limited budget.

Here is the list of the cards sorted by the Release Year and Generation

Card NameVRAMRelease YearNVIDIA GenerationAvg Price, eur
GTX 1660 Super6GB2019Turing250
RTX 3060 Ti8GB2020Ampere450
RTX 308012GB2020Ampere1000
RTX 309024GB2020Ampere1900
RTX 306012GB2021Ampere300
RTX 3090 Ti24GB2022Ampere2800
RTX 408016GB2022Ada Lovelace2200
RTX 4060 Ti8GB2023Ada Lovelace550
RTX 407012GB2023Ada Lovelace650
RTX 4070 Ti12GB2023Ada Lovelace1200
RTX 4060 Ti16GB2023Ada Lovelace550
RTX 4070 Super12GB2024Ada Lovelace850
RTX 507012GB2025Blackwell780
RTX 5070 Ti16GB2025Blackwell1100

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