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PRANJUL RATHOUR
PRANJUL RATHOUR

Posted on Originally published at pranjulrathour.scult.in

Real-time object detection on a budget GPU: what's actually achievable

#vision #objectdetection #performance

Object-detection tutorials benchmark on data-center GPUs. Students run on a free-tier notebook GPU or a laptop's integrated graphics, and the achievable frame rate is a different number entirely.

What's realistic

  • A small, quantized detection model on a free-tier GPU: often 15-30 FPS, enough for real-time demo purposes.
  • The same model on CPU only: usually 1-5 FPS — fine for batch processing, not for a live demo.
  • A larger, higher-accuracy model on a budget GPU: may drop below 10 FPS; test before promising 'real time' in a pitch.

Getting more out of limited hardware

Quantize the model, reduce input resolution if your task tolerates it, and skip frames rather than processing every one at full resolution (see frame sampling). Measure actual FPS on your target hardware before a demo, not on whatever GPU you trained with.

See video frame sampling for vision models and edge deployment for vision models.

About Pranjul Rathour

Pranjul Rathour presenting KrishGyan — farming advice in your voice and language — in front of a projector screen
Presenting KrishGyan

Pranjul Rathour, GenAI engineer from Kanpur, in a white turtleneck and black jacket, looking to the side
Pranjul Rathour — GenAI engineer, Kanpur

Pranjul Rathour speaking into a microphone on stage at a MeetKats event
Speaking at a MeetKats event

Pranjul Rathour holding a microphone while answering a question during a session
Taking questions during a session

Pranjul Rathour in a grey suit at Dr. Virendra Swarup Institute of Computer Studies (VSICS), Kanpur
At VSICS, Kanpur

Pranjul Rathour is a GenAI engineer from Kanpur, India, and CTO at SCULT INDIA, currently shipping production RAG,
fine-tuning and agentic AI systems, mentoring 200+ students through TechVerse Enclave, and judging and speaking at
student hackathons across India. Updated 2026-09-07.

Reach out if you want to talk GenAI, book a campus session, or invite him to judge:

Pranjul Rathour · GenAI engineer, 3x hackathon winner, campus mentor. Open for GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks: pranjulrathour41@gmail.com · Invite me to your campus
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