Claude Opus 5.5 places 3rd of 14 in photo-to-Blender agent benchmark; missing cache headers quadrupled cost
smith2008 · reddit · 2026-10-02
The author benchmarked 14 models as agents for a photo-to-Blender tool: look at a photo, write and run Blender Python, render, compare, repeat — hard caps of 20 min, $4 and 60 requests per scene, with deterministic code scoring instead of an LLM judge.
Results (average of three photos, 0-100): GPT-6 Astra 66 ($3.91) tops the board; GPT-6.1 Sol 61 ($0.36); Claude Opus 5.5 60 ($1.19) in 3rd, just 1 point behind Astra on the desk scene; Claude Sonnet 5.5 56 ($0.50), fastest at 5 min/scene; Claude Fable 5.1 48; Claude Opus 5 45 (best on the shopfront at 56, worst on the car at 34).
The caching gotcha: initial runs of Fable 5.1 and Opus 5 through the gateway lacked Anthropic's cache-control markers — 0% cache hit vs 96% for OpenAI models, so every request repaid full input price. Those runs hit the $4 cap in 8-18 requests (about $16.39 uncached per attempt). With markers added, cache hits reached 96-97%. If you call Claude through your own proxy or gateway, check your cache hit rate.
The 5.5 models ran later inside Claude Code; a control rerun of GPT-6 Astra scored 63 instead of 66. Full write-up with every render is on the author's blog.
Related event: GPT-6 Astra Sweeps 14-Model Photo-to-Blender 3D Reconstruction Benchmark(4 posts)→
More from coding & agent
- Computer use with Opus 5.5 shines on tedious web and form-heavy tasks — DimitrisPapail · 2026-10-02
- Reviewing AI code strains human attention—this dev is rebuilding the IDE around it — arpit_bhayani · 2026-10-02
- Manus agent reportedly runs 50 social media accounts at once with no human in the loop — anthara_ai · 2026-10-02
- LightMem-Ego upgrade brings real-time AI glasses memory with 0.42s latency — glenbeer · 2026-10-02
- Andrew Ng releases free 1-hour AI agent course with full roadmap — anthara_ai · 2026-10-02
- GitHub Copilot adds Dynamic Workflows: code-defined orchestration for multi-agent processes — PaulShellDev · 2026-10-02