Can the Apple M2 (8 GB) run Stable Diffusion 1.5?

62 pts

Yes, it runs well

Runs well. At FP16 it needs about 2.8 GB of 5.4 GB usable, with an estimated speed of 24 s.

Best precision: FP16
Memory mode: Everything on GPU
Time per image: 24 s
Output: 512×512, 25 steps

Download Stable Diffusion 1.5

Original weights · Hugging Face

Full-precision files from Stability AI / Runway, for fine-tuning, vLLM, Transformers, Diffusers or ComfyUI.

huggingface.co/stable-diffusion-v1-5/stable-diffusion-v1-5 (opens in a new tab)

No sign-in needed.

Official repo · GitHub

Reference code, inference scripts and docs from Stability AI / Runway. The weights themselves download from Hugging Face.

github.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion (opens in a new tab)

git clone https://github.com/CompVis/stable-diffusion

The original Stable Diffusion code from CompVis; the v1.5 weights are on Hugging Face.

Links checked 5 days ago against Hugging Face, Ollama and GitHub.

How the B grade is scored

Every result gets up to 100 points from four parts. The points decide the letter grade.

Model qualityEditorial quality tier of the model, scaled by the quantization or precision used.	15.8 / 45
Memory fitFull marks when everything sits in GPU or unified memory; fewer when part spills to system RAM.	25.0 / 25
SpeedGeneration speed against a 40 tokens/s target for LLMs, or render time against a target for image and video.	9.7 / 15
Memory useRewards using the memory you have, so a bigger, better variant beats a tiny one that leaves most memory idle.	12.0 / 15
Total	62.5 / 100	62 ptsGood (B) · 62 of 100 points: Model quality 15.8/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 9.7/15, Memory use 12.0/15

Grade scale: S 85+ · A 72+ · B 58+ · C 42+ · D 25+ · F under 25 points.

Every precision on the Apple M2 (8 GB)

Precision	Memory needed	Available	Time per output	Memory mode	Fit	Grade · points	Download
`FP16`	2.8 GB	5.4 GB	24 s	Everything on GPU	Runs well	62 ptsGood (B) · 62 of 100 points: Model quality 15.8/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 9.7/15, Memory use 12.0/15	Original weights (opens in a new tab)

Other hardware that runs it

63 ptsGood (B) · 63 of 100 points: Model quality 15.8/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 8.1/15 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 FP16 · 4.3 s
61 ptsGood (B) · 61 of 100 points: Model quality 15.8/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 5.4/15 Intel Arc B580 FP16 · 5.0 s
61 ptsGood (B) · 61 of 100 points: Model quality 15.8/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 5.4/15 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 12GB FP16 · 4.9 s
61 ptsGood (B) · 61 of 100 points: Model quality 15.8/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 5.4/15 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER FP16 · 2.3 s
59 ptsGood (B) · 59 of 100 points: Model quality 15.8/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 4.0/15 AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT FP16 · 1.6 s
59 ptsGood (B) · 59 of 100 points: Model quality 15.8/45, Memory fit 25.0/25, Speed 15.0/15, Memory use 4.0/15 NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB FP16 · 3.2 s

Estimates come from published hardware specs and our open formulas, not from running the model on your machine. Real speed varies with runtime, drivers and settings. Numbers marked “Measured” come from a linked benchmark.