Qwen 35B-A3B MoE is 4x Faster Than 27B Dense in Local Coding Tests

WSTangoDelta · reddit · 2026-08-08

A developer compared Qwen 35B-A3B MoE against the 27B dense model on local coding-maintenance tasks. Using llama.cpp, the MoE model generated text approximately 3.9x faster (116 tok/s vs 30 tok/s).

Both handled standard bug fixes and multi-file changes similarly. As tasks grew harder, the dense model showed an edge in implicit invariants and edge cases, but the practical quality gap was much smaller than the throughput difference. This suggests active parameter count isn't a straightforward proxy for practical coding capability.

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