PixArt-Sigma XL · 17 GPUs measured first-party · text-to-image · Updated October 2026
What GPU Do You Need for PixArt-Sigma XL?
We ran PixArt-Sigma XL at 1024px on 17 GPUs, from budget cards to datacenter parts, and measured image speed, power draw and peak VRAM on every one. The fastest was NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 at 30.01 images/min.
Benchmarked weights: PixArt-alpha/PixArt-Sigma-XL-2-1024-MS
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090
30.01 images/min on PixArt-Sigma XL, the ceiling. Measured on our bench. 32GB of VRAM, $1,999 at launch.
- 30.01 images/min on PixArt-Sigma XL
- 32GB, clears the PixArt-Sigma XL floor
- 575W board rating
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090
24.27 images/min on PixArt-Sigma XL, fastest card you can buy at retail. Measured on our bench. 24GB of VRAM, $1,599 at launch.
- 24.27 images/min on PixArt-Sigma XL
- 24GB, clears the PixArt-Sigma XL floor
- 450W board rating
GeForce RTX 5060 Ti
6.16 images/min on PixArt-Sigma XL, lowest launch price that still fits. Measured on our bench. 16GB of VRAM, $429 at launch.
- 6.16 images/min on PixArt-Sigma XL
- 16GB, clears the PixArt-Sigma XL floor
- 180W board rating
GeForce RTX 5070 Ti
13.34 images/min on PixArt-Sigma XL, most speed per dollar. Measured on our bench. 16GB of VRAM, $749 at launch. That is 17.81 images/min per $1,000 of launch price.
- 13.34 images/min on PixArt-Sigma XL
- 16GB, clears the PixArt-Sigma XL floor
- 300W board rating
What GPU Do You Need for PixArt-Sigma XL?, images/min by GPU
Top 15 shown; 2 more cards in the full table below.
Efficiency: images/min per 100W drawn
Top 15 shown; 2 more cards in the full table below.
Power is the average pulled during the run, sampled at 1Hz. The fastest card is often not the one here, and for anything left running this is the number that shows up on the bill.
Value: images/min per $1,000 of MSRP
Top 15 shown; 2 more cards in the full table below.
Launch price, not street price, so it ages. A speed leaderboard always crowns the most expensive card; this is the counterweight.
PixArt-Sigma XL. Measured image speed by GPU
| GPU | Images/min | s per image | img/W·min | Avg power |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 | 30.01 | 1.999 | 0.055 | 547.4 W |
| NVIDIA L40S | 26.95 | 2.23 | 0.08 | 338.1 W |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 | 24.27 | 2.472 | 0.058 | 415.2 W |
| GeForce RTX 5080 | 16.22 | 3.7 | 0.059 | 276.0 W |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 | 14.6 | 4.109 | 0.058 | 249.8 W |
| GeForce RTX 4080 Super | 14.59 | 4.112 | 0.065 | 224.7 W |
| NVIDIA RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell | 13.44 | 4.465 | 0.093 | 144.7 W |
| GeForce RTX 5070 Ti | 13.34 | 4.498 | 0.059 | 226.4 W |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super | 12.6 | 4.763 | 0.059 | 212.7 W |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti | 11.56 | 5.189 | 0.033 | 350.1 W |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 | 10.9 | 5.504 | 0.033 | 327.0 W |
| NVIDIA RTX 4000 (Ada Generation) | 10.45 | 5.74 | 0.085 | 122.9 W |
| NVIDIA A10G | 9.93 | 6.04 | 0.067 | 148.8 W |
| NVIDIA L4 | 8.08 | 7.42 | 0.112 | 72.3 W |
| NVIDIA RTX A4000 | 8.05 | 7.451 | 0.058 | 139.5 W |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti 16GB | 6.62 | 9.066 | 0.047 | 140.0 W |
| GeForce RTX 5060 Ti | 6.16 | 9.734 | 0.079 | 78.3 W |
What the numbers show. Across 17 GPUs measured on our own bench, RTX 5090 is fastest at 30.0 images/min. L4 is the most efficient, 8.08 images/min at 72W (0.112 images/min per watt). Per dollar of launch price, RTX 5060 Ti gives the most (18.7 images/min per $1,000). The fastest card with 16GB or less is RTX 5080 at 16.2 images/min. The measured peak was ~15GB, so it runs on 16GB cards and up. That floor is a property of the model, so it applies to every GPU, measured or not.
About PixArt-Sigma XL. PixArt-Sigma XL: from PixArt-alpha, 0.6B parameters, on Hugging Face since April 2024, OpenRAIL++ licence. 35,762 downloads in the last 30 days.
How it compares. L40S: PixArt-Sigma XL 26.95 images/min, Stable Diffusion 1.5 58.54, Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium 11.58 (2B), Playground v2.5 10.85 (3B), SDXL Turbo 423.5 (3B). 2 of 4 beat PixArt-Sigma XL here.
Cost on a rented GPU. 1,000 images of PixArt-Sigma XL: $0.16 on a RTX A4000 ($0.078/hr, 2.1 hours), $0.22 on a RTX 5090 ($0.39/hr, 33 min, 1.3x the cost).
PixArt-Sigma XL: cost per 1,000 images on rented GPUs
| GPU | Cheapest rate | Speed (images/min) | Cost per 1,000 images |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA RTX A4000 | $0.078/hr | 8.05 | $0.16 |
| GeForce RTX 5070 Ti | $0.15/hr | 13.34 | $0.19 |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 | $0.12/hr | 10.9 | $0.19 |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super | $0.16/hr | 12.6 | $0.21 |
| GeForce RTX 5080 | $0.21/hr | 16.22 | $0.22 |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 | $0.39/hr | 30.01 | $0.22 |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 | $0.20/hr | 14.6 | $0.23 |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 | $0.34/hr | 24.27 | $0.23 |
| NVIDIA RTX PRO 4000 Blackwell | $0.20/hr | 13.44 | $0.25 |
| GeForce RTX 4080 Super | $0.22/hr | 14.59 | $0.25 |
| NVIDIA RTX 4000 (Ada Generation) | $0.20/hr | 10.45 | $0.32 |
| GeForce RTX 5060 Ti | $0.14/hr | 6.16 | $0.37 |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 Ti | $0.27/hr | 11.56 | $0.39 |
| NVIDIA L40S | $0.79/hr | 26.95 | $0.49 |
| NVIDIA L4 | $0.44/hr | 8.08 | $0.91 |
Cheapest hourly rate we track on RunPod and Vast.ai, divided by the measured speed. Startup time and storage are extra.
Speed tiers for PixArt-Sigma XL. 30+ images/min: 1 (RTX 5090); 6-30 images/min: 16 (RTX 4090, RTX 5080, RTX 4080). 30 images/min means two seconds or less per picture.
Time per image. PixArt-Sigma XL at 1024px and 20 steps: 2.0s per image on the RTX 5090, 9.7s on the RTX 5060 Ti. A batch of 100 takes 3 min on the fastest card and 16 min on the slowest.
VRAM for PixArt-Sigma XL. Measured peak 13.7GB, so 16GB is the smallest common card size; smallest card it ran on: RTX 5080 (16GB).
Power on PixArt-Sigma XL. Most efficient: L4, 72W, 0.15 kWh per 1,000 images. Hungriest: RTX 5090, 547W, 0.30 kWh. At $0.15/kWh: $0.022 per 1,000 images.
Our verdict
Fastest on PixArt-Sigma XL: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, 30.01 images/min. Cheapest consumer card that ran it: GeForce RTX 5060 Ti ($429, 6.16 images/min). Cheapest to rent per job: NVIDIA RTX A4000, $0.16 per 1,000 images.
FAQ
- What GPU do I need to run PixArt-Sigma XL?
- About 14GB. Cheapest consumer card that ran it: GeForce RTX 5060 Ti (16GB, 6.16 images/min).
- How fast is PixArt-Sigma XL on the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090?
- 30.01 images/min at 547W, faster than every datacenter card we ran it on.
- How much does it cost to run PixArt-Sigma XL in the cloud?
- $0.16 per 1,000 images on a NVIDIA RTX A4000 at $0.078/hr, cheapest of 15 rentable cards we measured.
- Can I run PixArt-Sigma XL on a 12GB, 16GB or 24GB card?
- It used 13.7GB at the precision we tested. 12GB: no; 16GB: yes; 24GB: yes.
- Is the RTX 4090 or the RTX 3090 faster for PixArt-Sigma XL?
- The RTX 4090: 24.27 vs 10.9 images/min, 123% faster on our bench.
- Should I buy or rent a RTX 5090 for PixArt-Sigma XL?
- Its $1,999 launch price buys 5,139 rented hours at $0.39/hr, enough for about 9,253x 1,000 images of PixArt-Sigma XL. Buy only if you'll run more than that.
How we test
PixArt-Sigma XL at 1024px in diffusers, bf16, native precision with no offload, timed over three generations after a warmup, with power and VRAM sampled throughout. Image speed tracks tensor compute and architecture generation more than memory bandwidth, so the order here differs from our LLM boards.