A bit off tangent, what would be the best bang for the buck GTX GPU to buy nowadays if I want to use it for machine learning (like running stable diffusion locally)?
If you want the cheapest total spend where you buy your own hardware, it basically runs on any current-generation amd / nvidia / m1 card. I used a modified version of stable diffusion that works with < 10GB of DRAM on a AMD RX 6600XT. Check around before buying, obviously; I lucked out.
The modified version produces the same quality output, but has to page data in and out. It takes about 100 seconds per batch of five images. The card cost under $300, and is plugged into a ~ 10 year old Linux box. It's probably possible to go cheaper than that.