# [Fixed] RetroDiffusion does not work for RTX 5000/6000 GPUs

As of 5/31/2025, the [RetroDiffusion](https://astropulse.itch.io/retrodiffusion) extension for [Aseprite](https://www.aseprite.org/) does **not** work out of the box if you have an Nvidia RTX 5000 or RTX PRO 6000 series graphics card.

The issue is that RetroDiffusion creates a virtual environment and installs an outdated version of PyTorch that is **not** compatible with these newer GPUs.

Specifically, it installs:

```plaintext
safetensors==0.4.2
torch==2.3.0 -i https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu121 --trusted-host download.pytorch.org
torchvision==0.18.0 -i https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu121 --trusted-host download.pytorch.org
```

Here, cu121 refers to CUDA version 12.1, which **does not support** the RTX 5000 and RTX PRO 6000 series GPUs. You can check GPU compatibility on Nvidia's [CUDA GPU Compute Capability page](https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus). If you try to run Retro Diffusion in Aseprite, you would get following error.

```plaintext
RuntimeError: CUDA error: no kernel image is available for execution on the device
```

To fix this, you'll first follow the normal RetroDiffusion setup process, then update the PyTorch/CUDA version via the terminal.

## Steps

Make sure you have completed the initial setup for the **RetroDiffusion** extension.

1. Quit Aseprite.
    
2. Open Terminal.
    
3. Navigate to the `stable-diffusion-aseprite` folder.
    
    ```powershell
    cd ~\AppData\Roaming\Aseprite\extensions\RetroDiffusion\stable-diffusion-aseprite
    ```
    
4. Check your CUDA version.
    
    ```powershell
    nvidia-smi
    ```
    
    You should see something like `CUDA Version: 12.8`. Take note of this version. You'll use it in Step 7.
    
5. Activate the virtual environment.
    
    ```powershell
    .\venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
    ```
    
6. Check the installed version of PyTorch.
    
    ```powershell
    pip show torch
    ```
    
    It will likely show something like `Version: 2.3.0+cu121`.
    
7. Go to the [official PyTorch install page](https://pytorch.org/get-started/locally/) and select your correct configuration (e.g., pip, Python, CUDA 12.8).
    
    ![](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1748736505552/72da211b-830f-42be-abc2-c5ebba1796a3.png align="center")
    
8. Copy and paste the `pip3 install` command from the website into your terminal. For CUDA 12.8, it should look like:
    
    ```powershell
    pip3 install torch torchvision torchaudio --index-url https://download.pytorch.org/whl/cu128
    ```
    
9. Verify the update.
    
    ```powershell
    pip show torch
    ```
    
    It should now show something like `Version: 2.7.0+cu128`.
    
10. Launch Aseprite and run RetroDiffusion to generate images. Done. Enjoy!