Comment by stymaar
11 hours ago
> unless reasoning is set to xhigh
That's the default and I'm sure almost everyone else is also using it because other reasoning efforts yield subpar results from what I've seen.
11 hours ago
> unless reasoning is set to xhigh
That's the default and I'm sure almost everyone else is also using it because other reasoning efforts yield subpar results from what I've seen.
It is the default, which is insane.
I think it is clear that medium reasoning has more 'loopy' results like the older Qwens, but I actually think the low effort results are usually more appropriate.
If you plan to one-shot and vibe code AI slop to meet benchmarks, maybe xhigh makes sense. But if you want a responsive agentic coding assistant it is, to me, quite evidently the wrong choice, especially on modest hardware.
I have seen xhigh radically distract itself with rabbitholes and write considerably worse code than low.
It is my own opinion only, but I think much of the fuss about squeezing Qwen 3.8 27B into small local hardware setups, Macs etc., is a bit misguided.
There's too much focus on its benchmark scores, its one-shot capability, canned demos etc.
For my own needs Muse Glimmer (again on reasoning strength: low) is shaping up to being the more practical agentic tool. It is considerably faster than Qwen at solving real coding tasks.
I don't share your opinion:
IMHO, xhigh makes sense if you want a slower Opus4.6 at home. It is able to complete tasks autonomously in a way that I've never seen another local model do.
But yes, for simpler tasks or more hands coding sessions, it's simply not the best model out there as its verbosity makes unbearably slow.
Not just its verbosity; also its architecture.
Muse Glimmer has some interesting and it seems reasonably daring trade-offs in its architecture (that I wish I understood better) that seem to favour longer agentic “dialogue”, and it is just much more nimble all round, even though it’s a larger model.
Don’t get me wrong, I have spent time speccing out a box that I could use to run Qwen 3.8 27B better, and I am very glad it exists, as I am with the Gemma series. We have really an embarrassment of riches at the 32GB VRAM level already.
I just think maybe Meta have the more appropriate strategy (can’t believe I am saying this) for desktop AI.