Qwen3.8-27B GGUF
GGUF of Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B for llama.cpp. More files will land here. First one is a role mix I baked for my 3090, not a flat IQ3.
A note from me
Same deal as my Ling-3.0-flash and Nemotron-3.5-Lightning uploads: I make these to run on my own box, then share them.
Please report anything you find. Bad output, crashes, wrong metadata, a better flag for a particular card — open a discussion here or reach me at @ItsmeAjayKV.
Files
| File | Size | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
Qwen3.8-27B-gdn8-q6attn-iq3ffn.gguf |
13.6 GB (12.7 GiB) / 3.99 bpw | Role mix. GDN state Q8, attn Q6, mid-FFN IQ3_XXS. See below. | up |
Qwen3.8-27B-Q4_K_M.gguf |
~16–18 GB | Flat K-quant, if I bake one from the same BF16 | waiting |
Qwen3.8-27B-Q5_K_M.gguf |
~19–20 GB | Same | waiting |
Qwen3.8-27B-imatrix-v6.gguf |
~14 MB | Imatrix used for the mix. Reusable. | maybe |
This is not a flat IQ3_XXS. Only the mid-FFN tensors are IQ3_XXS. The filename is the recipe.
Download (CLI)
hf download hf://aj9o9/Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF/Qwen3.8-27B-gdn8-q6attn-iq3ffn.gguf
That pulls just the mix, into the current directory. Same thing, older-style:
hf download aj9o9/Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF --include "Qwen3.8-27B-gdn8-q6attn-iq3ffn.gguf"
Imatrix (only if you want to requant, not needed to run):
hf download hf://aj9o9/Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF/Qwen3.8-27B-imatrix-v6.gguf
Rule of thumb I actually use: pick the largest quant that fits in RAM/VRAM, not the largest one you can download.
Should you use the mix?
Take this if you want ~13G and you care more about keeping attention / GDN state fat than a uniform 3-bit file.
Skip this if you can hold Unsloth UD-Q3_K_XL (13.4G) or a Q4. Those beat it on every number I ran. I am not going to pretend otherwise.
What the mix actually is
Official BF16 → my my-mix.txt + bartowski's Qwen3.8 calibration-v6.
| Role | Type |
|---|---|
GDN state (ssm_* except out) |
Q8_0 |
| Full attention Q/K/V/O, embed, output, MTP | Q6_K |
GDN mixers (attn_qkv, attn_gate, ssm_out) |
Q4_K |
| FFN edge (layers 0–3, 60–63) | IQ3_S |
FFN mid (everything else ffn_*) |
IQ3_XXS |
| norms | F32 |
Imatrix: bartowski calibration-v6, rendered through this model's chat template. 583 chunks at -c 512, --parse-special --process-output. About 63% of that file is tool-call text. I did not use wiki-only calib.
Needs a recent llama.cpp with qwen35. Old trees will not load it.
Numbers I actually measured
Same box, same llama.cpp, same prompts. Wiki KLD is vs official BF16 logits (wiki.test.raw, n_ctx=512). GLSL / hard is my locked suite, think off, t=0.
| model | size | wiki KLD ↓ | GLSL ↑ | hard |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unsloth Q4_K_M | 16G | 0.015 | 0.946 | 6/6 |
| Unsloth UD-Q3_K_XL | 13.4G | 0.031 | 0.922 | 6/6 |
| bartowski Q3_K_S | 13.7G | 0.070 | 0.892 | 5/6 |
| this mix | 13.6 GB | 0.073 | 0.863 | 5/6 |
| Unsloth Q5_K_M | 19G | 0.006 | 0.855 | 5/6 |
| bartowski IQ3_M | 13.9G | 0.057 | 0.831 | 5/6 |
Read it like this:
- If you have 16G+, take Q4.
- If you want the best 13G-class file I measured, take Unsloth UD-Q3_K_XL, not mine.
- This mix beats bartowski IQ3_M on GLSL (0.863 vs 0.831) at a slightly smaller size, and it beats Unsloth Q5 on GLSL at 6G less. That is the honest reason it exists.
- Hard: I fail
lfu_cache. Q4 and UD-Q3 pass all six. I am not going to hide that. - Tools (single-shot + short agent loops) were a tie. Everyone passed the easy set. I will not claim a tools win.
Wiki KLD is English Wikipedia. The imatrix is chat + tools. Those two will not rank the same, and they didn't.
How I run it
llama-server \
-m Qwen3.8-27B-gdn8-q6attn-iq3ffn.gguf \
--host 127.0.0.1 --port 8080 \
-ngl 999 -fa on --jinja \
-np 1 -t 12 \
--alias qwen38-27b-gdn8 \
--cache-type-k q8_0 --cache-type-v q8_0 \
--spec-type draft-mtp \
-c 24576
From the Hub:
llama-server \
--hf-repo aj9o9/Qwen3.8-27B-GGUF \
--hf-file Qwen3.8-27B-gdn8-q6attn-iq3ffn.gguf \
-ngl 999 -fa on --jinja \
--spec-type draft-mtp \
--cache-type-k q8_0 --cache-type-v q8_0 \
-c 24576
MTP tensors are in the file (Q6_K). --spec-type draft-mtp is optional; it drafts, it does not change quality.
Official sampling from the Qwen card:
- Thinking:
temperature=1.0,top_p=0.95,top_k=20 - Instruct / no-think:
temperature=0.7,top_p=0.80,top_k=20,presence_penalty=1.5
I graded the table above at t=0, think off, so I could actually compare quants.
Hardware this was made on
| GPU | RTX 3090 24 GB |
| System RAM | 64 GB |
| Runtime | llama.cpp master, arch qwen35 |
The mix is meant to leave room for context on a 24 GB card. A 16 GB card can load the weights; keep -c honest.
Vision: this GGUF is text weights only. If you want the encoder, grab an mmproj from the official convert or from bartowski/unsloth and pass --mmproj. I have not tested that pairing.
About the model
- 27B dense, hybrid 16 × (3 GDN + 1 full attn), 64 layers + MTP
- hidden 5120, native 262k context
- thinking on by default in the official template
See Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B for the real model card. Their numbers are BF16, not this file.
Links
- Official weights: Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B
- Runtime: ggml-org/llama.cpp
- Calib used for the mix: bartowski Qwen3.8-27B calibration-v6
License
Apache 2.0, same as Qwen/Qwen3.8-27B. LICENSE is in this repo.
Disclaimer
Not affiliated with Alibaba, Qwen, Unsloth, or bartowski. Provided as-is. Use the official card for intended use, safety, and limitations.