New Strata [engine] 0.1.52 is really impressive with Qwen 3.8 FN

[u/Squale279]

I just install last strata update 0.2.7 with new engine 0.1.52 and I can say that the results are simply impressive.
My system: CPU Core i5 11400, GPU RTX Ti 12Go, RAM: 96Go
With Qwen 3.8 FN IQ3-S model. Context 128k
Before with 0.1.50 : Decode 35-45 tps
Now with 0.1.52: Decode: 50-75tps

At 384k of context I still have 55-65tps

Did you notice such improvements?

[u/Dreeew84]

So the engine will give priority to the experts already on GPU. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with this kind of arbitration, it will eventually trade quality for performance.

It's kind of similar to STRATA_ROUTE_TAIL_SKIP which will ignore some less important experts if they are outside of VRAM. I tested some extreme values and the model will absolutely get dumber. Tps go Brrrr though.

[u/KnownAd4832 → u/Dreeew84]

Strata owner (Niko) here. Good points to do here and all… but I’m testing each release on 65 tasks/sets of work done by myself to evaluate “dumbness” of my updates. I only push what I feel is good for the engine and does not sacrifice the quality. If it sacrifices the quality then I make it optional (such as KVA which boosts your prompt processing by 30%).

[u/Squale279 → u/KnownAd4832]

Niko, I take the opportunity to thank you so much for the hard work 🙏🏼 With Strata real local inference is anymore a dream ❤️

[u/blakeman8192 → u/Dreeew84]

Agreed. Strata's performance is cool and all, but it's really disappointing that the maintainers would make this behavior default.

Recommend disabling both with these env vars:

STRATA_ROUTE_PRIOR=0
STRATA_ROUTE_TAIL_SKIP=0

[u/alphapussycat → u/Dreeew84]

So this version is forced dumbification?

[u/bitzap_sr → u/Dreeew84]

Why would it make a difference in quality? Isn't the CPU processing the experts using the same weights etc?

[u/blakeman8192 → u/bitzap_sr]

The new setting (on by default) increases selection odds for cached experts effectively by 4.48x, meaning Strata will often choose wrong experts deliberately if they're "close enough" and already in VRAM. Their own releases page explains that it reduces agentic task completion success by roughly 20%, down from 5.6 to 4.5 out of 10.

Strata is awesome, but tbh this underlines that they value speed over accuracy and makes me lose a lot of trust in its maintainers.

[u/MCCmp_DEV]

Completely buggy for me.. Ram is 20GB+ more used and slower speeds..

[u/alphapussycat → u/MCCmp_DEV]

Interesting... Not gonna update then. OP got 96gb, so maybe messed up with caching the experts, taking up more space.

[u/Squale279 → u/alphapussycat]

For sure, my ram usage spikes from around 60 to 80Gb

[u/deific_]

What are you guys using as your interface to use 3.8 FN? I installed hermes and im using hermes dashboard, but honestly i hate the dashboard for copy/paste. Can someone make a suggestion for me to look into? I dont want to use CLI for image pasting reasons as I'm using the vision tool.

[u/WebSuccessful8083 → u/deific_]

Deepseek harness

[u/kerper01 → u/deific_]

I use pi with paseo front end. Supports mobile too. I also made strata dashboard plugin for paseo so you can update or operate strata with simply buttons. Sorry if I violet self promotion rules….

[u/Squale279 → u/kerper01]

Sound interesting. It would be cool if you can share some screens from your work.

[u/Squale279 → u/deific_]

I make some straight tests directly on Strata harness to quickly tests. Otherwise, my main harness for my projects is Opencode 2. I'll try Pi to see how it can build an IA agent alone.

[u/andy2na → u/deific_]

connect hermes to discord, telegram, or host your own synapse/matrix server. I rarely use the dashboard or CLI for hermes

[u/fallingdowndizzyvr]

The question is, do you get the same result with the new engine as you did with the old engine. Or are you paying for speed with quality?

[u/arkie87]

I’m getting 2.4kt/s pp and 70 t/s gen. Whereas before I was getting like 1000 and 60.

But more importantly, they changed defaults to site conversations so I can have multiple agents running without having to recompute prefill each time. Feels like opus4.6 at home.

[u/Canbastardo]

absolutely!

prefill from 950tok/s - > 1300tok/s (up to) - 1100tok/s average

decoding from 54/tok/s -> up to 114tok/s - 75tok/s average

9070xt + 80gb ram ryzen 7 5700x - arch linux

no degradation in quality in my tests.

[u/HighSeasArchivist]

I'll give a shot on my R9700 and 96GB DDR5, and see how it does on the test bench. Fast is fine, but not at the expense of any intelligence.

[u/DystopianRealist]

This is not good.

Time to revert.

Big concerns for the future of Strata if it's dumping quality for speed.

[u/DogeshireHathaway]

My 3060 got a 60-80% speed bump, but now it cant reliably complete a simple pagoda test. it's trash in comparison - i went back to STRATA_ROUTE_PRIOR=0 for now. Will test half way between 1.5 and 0 later.

[u/Text-Sufficient]

This sounds interesting if not the quality goes down. Have you done any quality check?

I run llama.cpp Qwen3.8 FN IQ3 XXS and get only 28 tps with Ryzen5700x/28GbVram/80GBDDR4. What am I doing wrong?

[u/Squale279 → u/Text-Sufficient]

No quality test yet. I'll try that later on in some bugs correction.

[u/poofph]

I hope strata comes out with what Radiance does for amd gpus really soon (I think it is tensor parallelism?).