To effectively benchmark image generation models like Stable Diffusion XL, it's essential to standardize the benchmark by determining the exact configuration that best represents your real-world requirements, including hardware and model serving engine, model configuration, input and output settings, concurrency and network considerations. Performance metrics should include latency, throughput, and cost, which can be measured by total generation time, images per minute, and cost per image, respectively. By carefully specifying these factors, you can make informed tradeoffs between latency, throughput, and cost to optimize performance for your application.