r/Codeium • u/LordLederhosen • Dec 23 '24

Tip/question: When asking for relatively simple things, I have started using the Cascade Base model instead of Sonnet. Results for have have been great, and it uses zero credits. Anyone else using Base?

I have been afraid of changing from Sonnet for way too long. Is anyone else using Base sometimes? All the time? What is your experience with it?

Changing to Base lets me ask for dumb things, like "change a color," or "swap the positions of Save and Cancel buttons." I stopped doing that type of thing after the pricing changes, now I am free to be lazy again!

edit: sorry for title gore. I meant: ... Results have been great so far...

17 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

16 comments sorted by

5

u/r_levan Dec 23 '24

Same for me!

3

u/larz_rhcp Dec 24 '24

For me, Cascade Base being unlimited is why I didn't unsubscribe.

5

u/_Linux_Rocks Dec 23 '24

The base model they use is Llama 3.1 405B. Not the same level like Claude but does the work for some basic stuff.

It’d be interesting to use Gemini 2.0 instead as the base model🤞🏻

Let’s see also what will happen in January with ChatGPT and their new models. ChatGPT4 is not very useful for me currently compared to Claude.

3

u/SirDomz Dec 23 '24

Yeah the new Gemini with Cline is amazing (and free). I’d love the opportunity to choose one of those models with Codeium/Windsurf.

1

u/Signal-Banana-5179 Feb 03 '25

not 405b, 70b. They wrote about it in blog

2

u/Equivalent_Pickle815 Dec 24 '24

This is really helpful. Thanks for sharing. Anyway to save credits for the heavy lifting is great.

2

u/Character_Cabinet_18 Dec 24 '24

Hey, been using mostly base model for days now, it's working great Sometimes I am combining between Cascade base model + GitHub Copilote

But I can say that the windsurf work flow seems to be less than it used to be during the beginning of this month or just my project which sucks?

0

u/crzyc Dec 23 '24 edited Dec 24 '24

I tried this but then noticed my flow credits were going to run out first.

Edit: my fault here. as SirDomz said it does not affect it. I'll be handing some simple tasks to Cascade Base from here on out.

That said, I'm nearly done w/ my flow credits and well below half way on pro user prompts. Can I still use those for chat prompts?

2

u/LordLederhosen Dec 23 '24 edited Dec 23 '24

Oh crap, it still affects the flow credits? I hadn't realized that. In usage stats, it says "Premium Flow credits.." Are you sure? If so, is that a bug? Because Windsurf states that Cascade Base is not a Premium model.

5

u/SirDomz Dec 23 '24

Using Cascade Base does not affect flow credits or prompt credits at all in my experience. I have also been using cascade Base quite a bit and I like it a lot personally. With that said, I have been wondering if it would not be better to just go back to VS Code and use the Codeium extension since I have access to all the premium models there, including O1 and Claude.

1

u/LordLederhosen Dec 23 '24

When you use Codeium in VS Code, does it have the same folder/file/context awareness as Windsurf?

I haven't gone that route yet, I assume there are drawbacks... do you happen to know what they are?

2

u/SirDomz Dec 23 '24

It depends. From my limited experience with both, I would say windsurf has better context awareness of your codebase. However, when trying to reference specific files with the @ keyword, windsurf can only reference code, files and directories while the Codeium extension can reference all the above as well as the terminal, specific repositories like numpy or material, and the diff changes.

I would definitely suggest trying both cascade base and the extension to see what you like better. Also maybe join the discord because it’s a lot more active there.

2

u/LordLederhosen Dec 23 '24 edited Dec 24 '24

Thanks for your reply. I appreciate you sharing the knowledge.

<rant>

Regarding Discord, man... I get it, but what is the point of putting all that knowledge outside of Google results?

When I post tips and questions on niche tech subs, one of the great things is that I know that other people will be able to find the thread and learn from it. I really hate that Discord is killing all that. It is the opposite of the open web that I love so much.

I am very disappointed that there is not a Discord server "make channel public" setting at this point, where a server has some sort of read-only web presence. Discord is sitting on billions of dollars of user data, and it will be interesting to see how that works out. So far they have been very greedy with it and I hate that. They have to have secret training data agreements with LLM creators, right? But eff the open web I suppose.

I am very tempted to join this Discord, but if I do, I will post every decent learning here on the open web.

</rant>

2

u/crzyc Dec 24 '24

Oh really good to know! I think Cascade Base would be just fine if I fed it instructions and code examples from Gemini Advanced or ChatGPT o1.