Laguna XS 2.1: Top coding pick for low-VRAM GPUs

needthosepylons · reddit · 2026-08-24

A "GPU poor" user recommends the Laguna XS 2.1 model.

Performance:

Runs well on 8GB and 12GB VRAM machines.
Achieves 30t/s with 60k context support.
Coding Tests: Passed "Make a Tetris-like game" and "Make a Sonic game" in one shot. Less polished than Qwen 27B, but Qwen is unrunnable on this hardware.
Comparisons: Outperformed Gemma 4 - 26B-A4B and Qwen 3.6 35B-A3B.

Note: Some reported looping issues (author didn't encounter them), so test with caution.

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