Illustrious XL / Pony (SDXL anime) on 6 GB of VRAM
Yes, but only just: Q8_0 leaves 1.3 GB free on 6 GB. The two big anime families built on SDXL. Almost every anime checkpoint on Civitai (WAI, NoobAI and friends) has this same size and fits exactly like SDXL.
Q8_0 (2.7 GB) fits with only 1.3 GB to spare (about 4.7 GB of 6 GB).
Got an RTX 40 or 50? Swap Q8_0 for FP8 (3.5 GB): same quality class, computed natively there.
01What to download
| Part | File | Folder | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | illustrious-q8_0.gguf Q8_0 · calcuis/illustrious | models/unet | 2.7 GB | Download → |
| Total download · keep about the same free on disk | 2.7 GB | |||
The calcuis FP8 and GGUF files contain the UNet only: take the text encoders and VAE from any SDXL checkpoint, or use the 16-bit checkpoint if it fits. Sizes from Hugging Face, 2026-10-01.
02Every file, on 6 GB
| File | Size | Needed | On this card | Quality | Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16-bit SAFETENSORS · OnomaAIResearch | 6.9 GB | 7.1 GB | spills 1.1 GB | the original weights | Hugging Face → |
| Q8_0 ← GGUF · calcuis | 2.7 GB | 4.7 GB | fits · 1.3 GB spare | practically identical to the original | Hugging Face → |
| FP8 SAFETENSORS · calcuis | 3.5 GB | 5.5 GB | fits · 0.5 GB spare | practically identical to the original | Hugging Face → |
| Q6_K GGUF · calcuis | 2.1 GB | 4.1 GB | fits · 1.9 GB spare | very close to the original | Hugging Face → |
| Q5_K_M GGUF · calcuis | 1.8 GB | 3.8 GB | fits · 2.2 GB spare | close; small differences in fine detail | Hugging Face → |
| Q4_K_M GGUF · calcuis | 1.5 GB | 3.5 GB | fits · 2.5 GB spare | good; some loss in fine detail and text | Hugging Face → |
| Q3_K_M GGUF · calcuis | 1.2 GB | 3.2 GB | fits · 2.8 GB spare | noticeable loss of detail | Hugging Face → |
| Q2_K GGUF · calcuis | 0.9 GB | 2.9 GB | fits · 3.1 GB spare | heavy loss; a last resort | Hugging Face → |
“Needed” adds 1.2 GB of working memory for Illustrious / Pony and a 0.8 GB reserve. Sizes 2026-10-01. The 6.94 GB checkpoint holds the UNet plus text encoders and VAE; only the UNet (about 5.1 GB) sits in VRAM while sampling. The GGUF and FP8 files from calcuis contain the UNet only.
03The text encoder
The text encoder is inside the checkpoint, so there is nothing extra to download.