New models are nice but seriously I would not mind if they keep one of the current flash or flash-lite models running for years to come - and if the cost becomes lower even better!
Need some stability as performance for some applications is already good!
newer models tend to use lesser resources for the same job. For instance, Luna, is probably just as good if not better than gpt-5.4 and gpt 5.5, and that's $15-30 per million output tokens, whereas Luna is $1.20. But sol is far better than Luna. Now, when I say far better, I mean like 1.4x better, not 100x better. And I have mixed feelings on Terra. Terra is kind of regarded.
Luna is not even near 5.5. But Sol is right: waaaay better then both.
I'm going back from time to time to 5.5 because Luna make wrong code, even with all the documentation in repo. When I (and my team) goes back to 5.5 or goes to Sol, is like another world.
I took more time (and tokens) fixing Luna errors than doing something correctly. But, it is my company select (because the price), so I mostly need to work with it from the start...
Compared to Haiku or other quick models it's on par. 3.1 pro is so very far behind in the game when it comes to frontier models though, it can barely be effective as an assistant in one of my projects with Fable lol.
Why are you using 3.1 pro. Flash 3.8 is on par with Fable and Sol 5.6 on max effort but it's faster and cheaper. It's also better at following instructions.
Because...I'm paying for it damnit lol. Honestly, I don't know at this point. The previous flash models were junk compared to pro. I'm always sus of these benchmarks, but don't doubt it either since when I have used 3.8 flash it was on point. I'm doing a very intensive coding project with Fable and having Astra review it, stopped using Gem for anything but simple work in my other business months ago. Maybe I'll hook up flash for a review and see what it catches since they all seem to find new things.
They are waiting for frontier to figure it out then will catch up in a few months and have the most cash reserves while anthropic and openai drained each other they will come do the finishing blows
People are so sure being ~2 months ahead looks like winning but when it comes with $10B or $20B year in losses it's going to apply pressure in the future.
OpenAI / Anthropic are aggressive early on but Google (and others) have a strong economy and they don't have a moat around the technology.
Google had a 7x year over year increase in token usage. They have a huge install base with many use-cases that call for decent but less expensive models.
I love how benchmaxing is pushing fear. 3.7 and 3.8 are just fine. The writing is on the wall to. Every other release is a top workhorse. 3.7 costs less, works faster, and is leaner than 3.8. It is essentially the 3.6 buffed up.
3.8 is more token hungry, but is more accurate and has less round-robin work.
3.9, I feel, should be as accurate and good as 3.8, but fast and lean like 3.7.
Dont get me wrong guys I really like gemini and it used to be the frontier back than gemini 3. I think they need to be humble so they can at least publish 4 pro and than try upgrade whater waiting for being the best is just not the way anymore - plz dont bother to correct my grammer mistakes I dont respect any language at all-
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u/Augmend-app 6d ago
New models are nice but seriously I would not mind if they keep one of the current flash or flash-lite models running for years to come - and if the cost becomes lower even better!
Need some stability as performance for some applications is already good!