PC MAGIK LAB
▷
Menu
EP 09

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning broke 1 page in 6. Can a rules file prevent that?

nvidia-nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b

Same model, same prompt, same rig. 3 runs with nothing added, 3 with one Karpathy rules file.

nvidia-nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b

Ranges overlap (counted effects)

Effects count CSS/JS constructs, not visual quality.

Explore all 6 runs ↓

Repeated ranges

BARE · n=325–34
KARPATHY · n=323–53
nvidia-nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b bare live output
BARENO RULES, NO EXTRAS
1:38 min:stime
7,313output tokens
7.3%thinking
568lines of code

Effort requested: medium; received: on · differs from requested effort · source: metrics.json. Effort is not comparable across models.

nvidia-nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b karpathy live output
KARPATHYONE RULES FILE
1:30 min:stime
6,259output tokens
12.1%thinking
600lines of code

Effort requested: medium; received: on · differs from requested effort · source: metrics.json. Effort is not comparable across models.

Every run. Every result.

BARE

NO RULES, NO EXTRAS · n=3

Run 1

32effects
1:32 min:stime
6,772output tokens
16.5%thinking
73.48tok/s
509lines of code

Effort requested: medium; received: on · differs from requested effort · source: metrics.json. Effort is not comparable across models.

nvidia-nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b_bare_r1

Run 2

34effects
1:38 min:stime
7,313output tokens
7.3%thinking
74.98tok/s
568lines of code

Effort requested: medium; received: on · differs from requested effort · source: metrics.json. Effort is not comparable across models.

nvidia-nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b_bare_r2

Run 3

25effects
2:20 min:stime
9,808output tokens
19.1%thinking
70.21tok/s
456lines of code

Effort requested: medium; received: on · differs from requested effort · source: metrics.json. Effort is not comparable across models.

nvidia-nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b_bare_r3

KARPATHY

ONE RULES FILE · n=3

Run 1

36effects
1:30 min:stime
6,259output tokens
12.1%thinking
69.81tok/s
600lines of code

Effort requested: medium; received: on · differs from requested effort · source: metrics.json. Effort is not comparable across models.

nvidia-nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b_karpathy_r1

Run 2

23effects
1:23 min:stime
5,703output tokens
15.5%thinking
68.65tok/s
425lines of code

Effort requested: medium; received: on · differs from requested effort · source: metrics.json. Effort is not comparable across models.

nvidia-nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b_karpathy_r2

Run 3

53effects
5:15 min:stime
22,560output tokens
10.7%thinking
71.56tok/s
798lines of code

Effort requested: medium; received: on · differs from requested effort · source: metrics.json. Effort is not comparable across models.

nvidia-nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b_karpathy_r3

output = thinking + final code. Lines of code show the page size the model chose, not the cost of equivalent work.

How to reproduce

Settings recorded for these runs. Multiple values show differences between runs. Effort is requested, not necessarily received; it is not comparable across models. Hover over quantization, K/V cache or engine values for their sources.

nvidia-nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b
Run settings by model
ModelQuantizationContext windowK/V cachemax_tokensEngineHarnessEffort requested
nvidia-nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3bQ3_K_XL262,144K f16 / V f16 (LM Studio default)131,072[email protected]pi 0.85.1medium

Watch the experiment.

Watch episode ↗

REPRODUCE THE EXPERIMENT

One prompt.
All the evidence.

Compare runs within the same model. Inspect the shared prompt, settings and raw measurements in the repository.