For dual DGX spark users; GLM 5.3 flash got a 50%+ performance boost

For the last few months, I ran DeepSeek v4.0 flash (NVFP4). First 0731, then visionexp because it was a free improvement. I got around 65 tps decode and almost 2k prefill, and ran 4-5 agents in parallel, totalling around 200 tps cumulative decode. Because of this, I did not feel like switching to GLM 5.3 because it would half the decode and prefill, did not scale well with multiple agents, and had a repetition bug a lot of people complained about.

Until a few days ago, when the latest version of this recipe dropped; a 50-90% decode improvement. So I took the plunge, and wow, am I impressed.

It's more intelligent than the new DeepSeek v4.1 flash (that does NOT run on dual DGX Sparks), and it's even faster than DeepSeek v4.0 flash in decode. Only a slight drop in prefill, which I'm more than happy to take in exchange;

|Test|visionexp-final (recorded)|glm53-low|Δ|
|:-|:-|:-|:-|
|B1 count-to-300|92.5|95.9|\+4%|
|B1 bulk SQL INSERT|88.3|97.2|+10%|
|B2 chat|38.7|42.5|\+10%|
|B2 count|92.8|96.0|\+3%|
|B2 code|63.5|69.3|\+9%|
|B2 prose|32.8|37.1|+13%|
|B2 tool|79.8|85.1|\+7%|
|B2 battery mean|61.5|66.0|\+7%|
|B2 accepted tok/step|3.26 of 6 (54%)|3.55 of 8 (44%)|see note|
|B3 prefill @1.5K|1738|1376|-21%|
|B4 prefill @32K|1902|1576|-17%|
|B4 prefill @128K|1758|1578|-10%|
|B4 decode @32K|41.1|44.2|\+7%|
|B4 decode @128K|49.5|47.1|\-5%|
|B5 c1 aggregate|91.7|90.1|\-2%|
|B5 c2 aggregate|45.4|51.4|+13%|
|B5 c4 aggregate|63.4|58.6|\-7%|
|B5 c6 aggregate|79.1|77.5|\-2%|
|B7 soak (40 min at c4)|522 req, 0 err, 87.4 agg|503 req, 0 err, 0 soft-empty, 83.6 agg|−4%|
|B8 byte-stable probes|8/8|6/8|worse|
|B8 garble gate|30/30 clean|30/30 clean|=|
|B8 non-Latin / U+FFFD|not measured|3/3 clean, 0 U+FFFD|new gate|
|KV pool|1,988,929 tok @ gmu 0.85|560,362 tok (6 GiB/rank pin)|−72%|
|NRestarts through the pass|0|0|=|

I've tested it for a few days now, both for technical coding, devops/sysadmin and also vision (to recognize some plants), and it is better than I hoped for. Basically Claude Opus 4.8 level. Slower of course because it has to think a lot more, but good enough to comfortably leave it chugging for hours on tickets without worry of derailing. I don't see a reason NOT to upgrade, so have a try and enjoy!