Hit 500 AI-generated images in a day and my GPU almost gave up

I was testing out Stable Diffusion XL for a client project and pushed out 500 images in like 10 hours. My RTX 3080 hit 85 degrees and started throttling hard around image 400. Had to crack a window and point a desk fan at my PC just to finish. Anyone else ever pushed their hardware this far with image generation?

2 comments

2 Comments

ray36325d ago

That 85 degree core temp you mentioned, yeah that's bad, but the real killer is the VRAM junction temps. My 3080 hits 105 on the memory when I push it hard with long SDXL batches. Did you pull up HWiNFO during that run or were you just watching the core temp? I bet your memory was throttling way earlier than you think, probably around image 250 or 300. That sustained heat soaks into the pads and they lose effectiveness fast.

the_joel25d ago

Are you sure it was just the GPU that almost gave up? I bet your power supply was screaming too. Pushing a 3080 that hard for 10 hours straight, you probably hit some crazy power draw peaks that a lot of units can't handle steady. Most people don't think about the voltage ripple or the load on the PCIe cables when they're running batch jobs like this. Your fans probably sounded like a jet engine too, but the real silent killer is that sustained heat soaking into your VRAM. I'd check your hotspot temps next time, not just the core temp, because that's what really starts cooking memory modules on long runs.