Stable Diffusion 1.5 on 20 GB of VRAM
Yes. 16-bit fits on 20 GB with 16.7 GB to spare. The 2022 model that started it all. Under 1B parameters, native 512 px, and still a huge library of fine-tunes. Runs on almost anything.
Runs well
Yes, with room to spare.
16-bit (2.1 GB) needs about 3.3 GB in use, so 16.7 GB of the 20 GB stays free: room for a larger image, a LoRA or a ControlNet.
Best file16-bit
File size2.1 GB
VRAM needed~3.3 GB
System RAM16 GB+
Memory map · 20 GB GPU3.3 GB / 20 GB
010 GB20 GB
Weights 16-bit · 1.7 GBWorking memory · 0.8 GBReserve · 0.8 GBFree · 16.7 GB
calculated How this is counted.
01What to download
| Part | File | Folder | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Checkpoint | v1-5-pruned-emaonly-fp16.safetensors 16-bit · Comfy-Org/stable-diffusion-v1-5-archive | models/checkpoints | 2.1 GB | Download → |
| Total download · keep about the same free on disk | 2.1 GB | |||
One file: the checkpoint already contains the text encoders and the VAE. Sizes from Hugging Face, 2026-10-01.
02Every file, on 20 GB
| File | Size | Needed | On this card | Quality | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16-bit ← SAFETENSORS · Comfy-Org | 2.1 GB | 3.3 GB | fits · 16.7 GB spare | the original weights | Hugging Face → |
“Needed” adds 0.8 GB of working memory for SD 1.5 and a 0.8 GB reserve. Sizes 2026-10-01. The 2.13 GB checkpoint also holds the text encoder and VAE; the UNet alone is about 1.7 GB at 16-bit.
03The text encoder
The text encoder is inside the checkpoint, so there is nothing extra to download.