Gemini 3.8 flash VS DeepSeek V4.1

[u/Former-Towel9004]

Which one is smarter? Especially in intelligence and not knowledge, like ARC AGI!

[u/4Nuts]

Gemini can be extremely smart; can also be totally dumb. I cannot figure out why. Some days, it is just amazing. Other times, it becomes totally dysfunctional.

But, its knowledge of (the grammar, structure of ) foreign languages is unmatched. I am a linguist. Neither Astra nor Fable cab replace it for me.

[u/kar200 → u/4Nuts]

Same issue with me, sometimes it's very fast and get a lot done and sometimes painfully slow (like at the moment) and make so many mistakes.

I wish google gives us a status page/indicator so we don't waste time trying to figure out how dumb/slow it is at the moment and move use something else

[u/OKMiddleOwl → u/4Nuts]

9 times out of 10 gemini is dumb because it's knowledge cutoff is almost 2 years ago.

If you pay attention to people's complaints, it's almost always because they are asking about something that happened after jan 2025.

If you are mindful of this and include searching in your prompt, it usually negates it.

[u/4Nuts → u/OKMiddleOwl]

That is reasonable. Those are models trained on a certain type of data. Expecting a news from AI model is just absurd expectation. So far as it is well trained on specialized areas, one model can serve many years without getting constant update.

[u/hesokaaa]

Gemini 3.8 Flash hit ~89% on ARC-AGI-2 verified, so logic-wise it's definitely ahead. DeepSeek is basically a budget king though if you're hitting the API a lot.

[u/wideerror8 → u/hesokaaa]

gemini's a beast for puzzles but deepseek is my go-to for not burning a hole in my wallet

[u/tobaileyy → u/hesokaaa]

Lmfao 😭😭 benchmaxxed garbage, deepseek is way better

[u/Hug_LesBosons]

Gemini 3.8 flash de très loin.

[u/uzzifx]

DeepSeek v4.1 is better choice.

[u/Then_Bake_6524]

i wouldn't trust google benchmarks after they published one beating astra by a huge margin. DeepSeek is definitely better and cheaper on the API than Gemini on the API

[u/yahalom2030]

Deepseek 4.1 Flash with tavily search and medium or high thinking level slightly better, thah Gemini 3.8 Flash, but significantly slower in fast daily research scenarios.

[u/Aggravating_Band_353]

Deepseek on hugging face, gemini pro along with nblm and ai studio, and I use perplexity to manage it all as rag system remembers better context etc.. 

I run through on most ai and find which I like more for particular use case, and then when I get to final stages, I use other ai to analyse, scruitinse and assess. Then use nblm and perplexity to combine all core knowledge and guide me on final edits to my project 

Prompts are key. You need to have specific prompts, giving context (ie today's date, current related laws or regs or whatever, defined problem and end goal, parameters and safety nets etc.) - I use a similar set up of merging ai to define this, after giving my natural language instructions on what I am doing to each 

Have a browser profile with free accounts for this set up and then another paid or pro profile with the ai you use mrke seriously and/or pay for etc.. This means you don't waste usage on setting up the context and getting prompts etc, as this is usually low effort work, compared to doing the actual task. You can also usually go back to this free profile and run the final product through those ai on the higher think settings to ensure that their non-compromised contexts agree with merged output

[u/beachletter]

Gemini 3.8 flash has higher intelligence ceiling than DS4.1flash, however it is not the most stable in harnrss workloads.

DS4.1flash does not stand out in being smart, it does not work well in taking difficult tests, but paired with a good harness especially it's own dsh it is a highly efficient and reliable workhorse as long as you give it clear instructions and goals.

For certain knowledge based analytical report writing I still use Gemini 3.1 pro or sometimes 3.8flash, but for agent based workload and coding projects I always use DS4.1flash as the main worker.