3.8-27B has ruined 3.5/3.6-35B’s for me. It’s just *absurdly* superior.
Applied science work, from workflow design, data pipeline, results analysis, article/reports writing and data publishing online. 5 projects I did in the past replicated from start to finish.
3x to 4x more total wall time. Yes, HUGE toll on how much you can do in a day if this was the only model you could use in your laptop.
But oh my…the quality of that thing. The stupid level of attention to detail. I have the Z.ai api, so I can compare it with 5.3 and 5.3-flash:
The gap between 5.3 (flash and regular) and 3.8-27B is much less, smaller when not plain tiny, than the gap between 3.8-27B and any of the 3.5/3.6-35B-A3B (vanilla, kat, Ornith/tiel, nex-2).
Only Ornith came close, but it never matched it.
But it’s also spending 22 to 33% less tokens (effort =medium) and less ram footprint, so you get more done without hitting limits,compaction, etc.
So yeah, guess I’ll sip more tea, play the piano, whatever. Let that fat bottom Qwen work.