This guide is for self-hosting Stable Diffusion on an Nvidia GPU with >=8GB of VRAM.
Hardware recommendations
The following is strictly my opinion at time of writing…
Ampere series (latest) GPUs are the most recommended for both cost and features but Turing, Volta, Pascal and Maxwell series GPUs should all work. See: cuda support
Cheapest recommendation: Nvidia Quadro P4000 8GB (i’ve confirmed it works with this guide)
Best all-rounder and value for money: Nvidia RTX 3060 12GB (i’ve confirmed it works with this guide)
Best consumer card: Nvidia RTX 3060 16GB (or 4090 16GB when avail.)
While it’s possible to run Stable Diffusion on AMD GPUs and GPU’s with 4GB of RAM but it’s complicated and not recommended.
Resources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUDA
Install and confirm the presence of an Nvidia card
Follow this guide to install nvidia drivers: https://linuxhint.com/install-nvidia-drivers-on-ubuntu/
# Install the nvidia cli
sudo apt install nvidia-smi
# Confirm your card(s) are recognized
nvidia-smi
# Reboot
reboot
# Note: If nvidia drivers are included in an update the OS must be reset to using Stable Diffusion
Install stable-diffusion-webui
sudo apt install git pip wget python3 python3-venv -y
# Download and initalize the stable-diffusion cloud install package
cd $HOME
git clone https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui
# Optional: localize the python env directory for portability
python3 -m venv $HOME/stable-diffusion-webui/venv/
source $HOME/stable-diffusion-webui/venv/bin/activate # <== Note: needs to be run every new shell session
# Optional: Download models (highly recommended)
cd $HOME/stable-diffusion-webui/models/Stable-diffusion
wget -c https://huggingface.co/ckpt/rev-animated/resolve/main/revAnimated_v11.safetensors
wget -c https://huggingface.co/runwayml/stable-diffusion-v1-5/resolve/main/v1-5-pruned-emaonly.safetensors
# Optional: Download a VAE (highly recommended)
cd $HOME/stable-diffusion-webui/models/VAE
wget -c https://huggingface.co/stabilityai/sd-vae-ft-mse-original/resolve/main/vae-ft-mse-840000-ema-pruned.ckpt
# Pre-download upscaler models
cd $HOME/stable-diffusion-webui/models/ESRGAN/
wget -c https://github.com/cszn/KAIR/releases/download/v1.0/ESRGAN.pth
cd $HOME/stable-diffusion-webui/models/RealESRGAN/
https://github.com/xinntao/Real-ESRGAN/releases/download/v0.1.0/RealESRGAN_x4plus.pth
wget -c https://github.com/xinntao/Real-ESRGAN/releases/download/v0.2.2.4/RealESRGAN_x4plus_anime_6B.pth
# Optional: Download embeds for prompt enhancement (highly recommended)
cd $HOME/stable-diffusion-webui/embeddings
wget -c https://huggingface.co/yesyeahvh/bad-hands-5/resolve/main/bad-hands-5.pt
wget -c https://huggingface.co/datasets/Nerfgun3/bad_prompt/resolve/main/bad_prompt_version2.pt
wget -c https://huggingface.co/Xynon/models/resolve/main/experimentals/TI/bad-image-v2-39000.pt
wget -c https://huggingface.co/datasets/gsdf/EasyNegative/resolve/main/EasyNegative.pt
# Start the webui which will pull in remaining dependencies
# Note: This will take a long time and if things break it'll be here, see: Resolving webui.sh errors
# If successful, it'll stay open with "Running on local URL: http://127.0.0.1:7860"
bash $HOME/stable-diffusion-webui/webui.sh
Resolving webui.sh errors (if any)
# Cloning Taming Transformers
# For error: "error: RPC failed; curl 56 GnuTLS recv error (-54): Error in the pull function."
cd $HOME/stable-diffusion-webui/
git config --global http.postBuffer 1048576000
# If internet is unstable, loop installation till it completes
while ! bash $HOME/stable-diffusion-webui/webui.sh; do sleep 1; done
# In another terminal, test if the site is up
curl http://127.0.0.1:7860
GUI Configuration
Open a browser and go to: http://127.0.0.1:7860
Enable the VAE:
- On the top bar, click “Settings”
- On the side bar, click “Stable Diffusion”
- Click the “SD VAE” dropdown and choose: vae-ft-mse-840000-ema-pruned.ckpt
- Click “Apply settings”
Privacy/Security note
The web interface uses CSS from fonts.googleapis.com and a script from cdnjs.cloudflare.com. These online dependencies can be removed by downloading and localizing the references. I’ll write a script to do this automatically if there’s demand.
Using Stable Diffusion
Renders are stored in: $HOME/stable-diffusion/outputs/
Example Prompt
AI model: revAnimated_v11.safetensors
Sampling: Euler a
CFG Scale: 6
Pixel range: 1080x720
Positive Prompt
((best quality)), ((masterpiece)), ((realistic)), (detailed), (cyberpunk), (Ferrari), race cars, blender, intricate background, intricate buildings, ((masterpiece)), HDR
Negative prompt
(semi-realistic:1.4), (worst quality, low quality:1.3), (depth of field, blurry:1.2), (greyscale, monochrome:1.1), nose, cropped, lowres, text, jpeg artifacts, signature, watermark, username, blurry, artist name, trademark, watermark, title, multiple view, Reference sheet
its pretty dope stuff esp for inspiration