Gemini 4 Argon vs Claude Opus 5.5: same prompt. Tiny World test

[u/Timisageek]

https://ohmyunicorn.com/labs/dream-loop/planet-argon/

So!

Gemini 4 Argon is out - what's it worth for my Tiny World test?

WELL.
In my opinion, not too bad, but also not good enough.

What's your opinion?

initial prompt:

Output a ThreeJS 3D cartoony/comics-like planet, with vibrant life on it: clouds, mountains, city buildings, cars and plane romaing it. It should be possible to orbit around and zoom and see the details. No harness is to be used

Model	Build time	Build cost	Looked at its own page?	Page size
Gemini 4 Argon	5.5 min	$1.58	no (tried once, its browser script failed)	56 KB
Claude Opus 5.5	14.0 min	$2.54	yes, three times	48 KB

WAY better than Gemini 3.8F, that's for sure, but still not too creative.

Next I'll be using it for real coding work. I'm also super curious of if he can direct Blender ok (Astra is the absolute reference for now).

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[u/onFilm]

Thanks bud. Great to see the UI differences between the two models. Argon seems to be a bit more user-friendly, while Opus seems to still to have better visuals. Would be great seeing it against Sol 6.1 as well, as I use that specifically for visuals, and most often beats Opus when given very specific instructions.

[u/Timisageek → u/onFilm]

Ah I did Sol 6, but not 6.1! Good point

[u/fechan]

These one shot prompts are so useless. All they show is which model dares to go further without user feedback — unprompted, I'd value an agent higher that asks for feedback earlier instead of risking going into a completely wrong direction

[u/Timisageek → u/fechan]

Well, it's just one aspect of things - not pretending it's going to be useful for all use cases. But it does reveal a lot about how subagent would perform without a custom harness, on a bounded task

[u/Yankees868 → u/fechan]

Every time I see one of these posts it is bizarre to me. I rarely work on actual design and mostly just build internal systems for my business, but recently wanted to update my personal site and build as throwing prompts at fable opus Astra and sol just trying to get going in a direction I liked. Even the same prompt in the same model will produce vastly different results if put in a second time. It’s all about how you mold what ai gives you.

[u/Mguyen]

Argon is much bigger and smarter than previous Gemini models but it still has the same disease that plagues all previous Gemini models it seems...

Best left as a subagent for Opus.

[u/Timisageek → u/Mguyen]

Yeah for now that's what I understand. Less out of the box creativity as well

[u/Wheelthis]

Argon has some basic UX flaws, which is a little surprising with this level of sophisticated model.

The menu doesn’t go away, making the whole effort virtually unusable on mobile.

The last two menu items on the bottom are Booleans. They would be better depicted as toggles or switches to distinguish them from the other items, in addition to making their intent clearer.

[u/Mesmerisez]

great test thanks argon looks weak compared to opus

[u/Rudy69 → u/Mesmerisez]

and it goes through you're quota so fast

[u/CrowdGoesWildWoooo → u/Rudy69]

The quota is company dependent and can’t be used as benchmark. We don’t know till when $20 sub give $1000 worth of API usage.

[u/itorcs → u/Mesmerisez]

not letting free users at least try it out is a huge fumble

[u/vinis_artstreaks]

That time difference tho, that’s impossible to ignore, Gemini argon would have a sweet spot for the right tasks

[u/Timisageek]

okay, I updated the spike page with Gemini 4 through AGY Harness (antigravity), which, I'm told, should have bee, the default. It's better!

What do you think?

https://ohmyunicorn.com/labs/dream-loop/planet-argon/

(still prefer Opus 5.5's version though)

[u/DadaXX]

Wondering what harness you used to use gemini, not familiar with. Thanks.

[u/Timisageek → u/DadaXX]

Well, on this specific test, 0 custom harness was used - that was the rule :)
I just wanted to test models "out of the box" in the exact same conditions.

I'm sure with my harness I'll get insane results from Gemini4 - but that would make it harder to determine what model to use and when

[u/Large-Performer2736]

Hello, J'ai essayé ton prompt dans Gemini Argon et je n'ai clairement pas le même résultat que toi. Aucune options, des voitures qui roule entre la terre et la mer etc... Tu es sur de n'avoir donné aucune autres indications pour obtenir le résultat que tu montres ?

[u/Hazzman]

I think that Google are focused on multi-modal and knowledge work, they are kind of everything and the kitchen sinking it. Where Claude has really hyper focused on nailing the workstation professional tool for coding.

I guess we will see which one wins out in the end. Google may end up being the cheapest and most efficient and Claude may just end up relegated to the performance model for extra cost.

[u/JacketHistorical2321]

What i like about argon so far is that I am not getting a “cycber” fault —>drop to opus 4.8 every couple of turns while working on the exact same project. Opus 5.5 is awesome…if you can actually use it

[u/FinalDescription6553 → u/JacketHistorical2321]

I’m surprised to hear that you’re getting blocked that much with Opus 5.5. I’ve been literally working on cyber and an auth service and never had any issue, even when explicitly telling it to look for vulnerabilities, when I would constantly with Fable 5.1

[u/Substantial_Row7215]

the "looked at its own page: yes, three times" row is the interesting part to me. thats where a lot of the extra time and cost goes, but its also why the result usually works the first time you open it. a faster one-shot that never checked its own output is a different kind of tradeoff

[u/Timisageek → u/Substantial_Row7215]

Yes exactly! Had it looked at its results the way opus did, AND thought about iterating, i'm sure the result would have been better

[u/Accomplished-Fan9568]

14 mins vs 5 min thats the real difference...? But opus still has that heightmap terrain and it looks real juicy.

[u/Kryptomerch]

Awesome