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Local LLMs perform better when you teach them to ask before they answer

xda-developers.com

11–14 of 14 posts

Re: Local LLMs perform better when you teach them to ask before they answer

#11
This is not new knowledge at all. In fact it was discovered before, and is the direct precursor of, Chain of Thought/Thinking models which are now the norm.

What's most interesting and surprising is watching all latecomers rediscover optimizations from years ago. Some people really do need to do things the hard way ig.

Re: Local LLMs perform better when you teach them to ask before they answer

#12

This is not new knowledge at all. In fact it was discovered before, and is the direct precursor of, Chain of Thought/Thinking models which are now the norm. What's most interesting and surprising is watching all latecomers rediscover optimizations from years ago. Some people really do need to do things the hard way ig.

Can't really blame anyone who started paying attention: the ability of these models to just generate volumes of text means any honest broker has to wade into a limitless pool of useless information, just to find a workable idea.

Just because you clocked this specific detail doesn't mean it's some guiding principal built into the bedrock; there is no bedrock at the moment, because it's a non-determinant system whose being sold as something grandeur than a text processing machine.

It doesn't help that the computer scientists building it don't recognize they're essentially doing a bunch of cultural and socialogical science rather than some rigerous mathematical artiface.

Then there's the billionaires who want to corner the market and have you believe they can eradicate the "low capital workers".

Anyway, there's zero real integration of how these models work.

Re: Local LLMs perform better when you teach them to ask before they answer

#13
post #2

I'm positively surprised such a little guidance makes such a difference. is it also useful with the smaller (and cheaper) cloud models?

Yes. I run local models, Qwen3.6-27B and IMHO the massive level up was the agents and skills files that I've worked on. Basically I run a flow Brainstorming > Create Spec > Review Spec* > Create Plans > Review Plan* > Execute Plan (in subagents) > Review Against Plan > Code Review* > Open PR > Finish Plan (marks plan files done) * Each review step marked with an asterisk uses a paid larger LLM, right now Deepseek V4…

Would you mind sharing your HW configuration? Thank you.

Re: Local LLMs perform better when you teach them to ask before they answer

#14
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I run local models, Qwen3.6-27B and IMHO the massive level up was the agents and skills files that I've worked on. Basically I run a flow Brainstorming > Create Spec > Review Spec* > Create Plans > Review Plan* > Execute Plan (in subagents) > Review Against Plan > Code Review* > Open PR > Finish Plan (marks plan files done) * Each review step marked with an asterisk uses a paid larger LLM, right now Deepseek V4…

Would you mind sharing your HW configuration? Thank you.

Sure. It's just an old I7 8700 (non-k), 64gb ram. Running proxmox. But recently I put an AMD R9700 AI Pro, in there which is a 32gb inference focused card, think of it as a 32gb version of a 9070xt.

All the inference happens on that card, so the CPU/RAM is there for the other containers.

I'll eventually swap the motherboard and CPU for something better, so I can fit 1 or 3 more of those cards.

Why not NVIDIA? 32gb on team green means spending crazy money. And I can get 4 R9700s for the cost of one 32gb 5090.

128gb ... Vs 32gb.

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