Qwen3.5-9B Nears Win in Tough Math Game

๐ก9B Qwen3.5-9B almost wins reasoning game bigger models fail
โก 30-Second TL;DR
What Changed
Game rules: 10 guesses, higher/lower + correct digits feedback
Why It Matters
Demonstrates compact 9B model's strong dual reasoning for 16GB VRAM users. Highlights potential for local small LLMs in complex logic tasks.
What To Do Next
Quantize Qwen3.5-9B to q4_k_m and benchmark on the provided math guessing prompt.
Key Points
- โขGame rules: 10 guesses, higher/lower + correct digits feedback
- โขQwen3.5-9B q4_k_m off by 1 digit (322785 vs 322755) on round 10
- โขOutperforms larger models like Cogito v1 14B and gpt-oss 20B
- โขPrompt guides binary search early, entropy later with bounds tracking
๐ง Deep Insight
Background and context from public sources โ not the original article. 8 sources cited.
๐ Enhanced Key Takeaways
- โขQwen3.5 introduces a flagship 397B-A17B model using hybrid linear attention and sparse mixture-of-experts architecture, activating only 17B parameters per forward pass for enhanced efficiency[2].
- โขQwen3.5 expands language support to 201 languages and dialects from 119, with a hosted version offering a 1M-token context window and multimodal capabilities for text, images, and video[2].
- โขCogito v1 14B, a competitor in the benchmark, employs a Mixture-of-Experts design similar to larger sparse models, activating around 3.6B-5.1B parameters per token despite its 14B total size[5][6].
๐ Competitor Analysisโธ Show
| Feature | Qwen3.5-9B (q4_k_m) | Cogito v1 14B | gpt-oss 20B |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model Size | 9B | 14B | 20B |
| Activated Params | Dense (full) | ~3.6B-5.1B | ~3.6B |
| Context Window | Not specified | 131K | 131K |
| Inference Speed | High (quantized) | ~250-400 t/s | ~300-450 t/s |
| VRAM (quantized) | Low (~4-6GB est.) | ~12-14GB | ~16GB |
| Strengths | Math game (10/10) | Agentic tasks | Reasoning/coding |
| Pricing (API, est.) | Open-weight (free) | Open-weight | $0.04-0.18/M tokens[5] |
๐ ๏ธ Technical Deep Dive
- โขQwen3.5 series features multimodal support for vision-language agents, processing text, images, and video with spatial reasoning and tool integration[2].
- โขgpt-oss 20B uses FP8 precision, supports 131K context length, and excels in function calling and structured output, with native tool use capabilities[1][4].
- โขCogito v1 14B (likely) leverages sparse MoE architecture, activating fewer parameters per token (e.g., 3.6B-5.1B) for efficiency in agentic workflows[5][6].
- โขQuantization like q4_k_m on Qwen3.5-9B reduces VRAM footprint significantly, enabling strong performance on consumer hardware for tasks like binary search[1].
๐ฎ Future ImplicationsAI analysis grounded in cited sources
โณ Timeline
๐ Sources (8)
Factual claims are grounded in the sources below. Forward-looking analysis is AI-generated interpretation.
- dasroot.net โ Qwen3 14b vs Gpt Oss 20b
- sourceforge.net โ Qwen3.5 vs Gpt Oss 20b
- artificialanalysis.ai โ Gpt Oss 20b vs Qwen3 14b Instruct Reasoning
- blog.galaxy.ai โ Gpt Oss 20b vs Qwen3 14b
- siliconflow.com โ Qwen3 14b vs Gpt Oss 20b
- clarifai.com โ Openai Gpt Oss Benchmarks How It Compares to Glm 4.5 Qwen3 Deepseek and Kimi K2
- news.ycombinator.com โ Item
- openrouter.ai โ Qwen3 14b
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Original source: Reddit r/LocalLLaMA โ
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