[yusheng227507]

Problem and result

Two results-only standard-v1 runs on one AMD RDNA2 machine, same engine, same model, back to back: the pre-tuning baseline and a tuned configuration. Both are track: custom.

This also supplies the AMD/RDNA2 side of the two-hardware pilot the draft protocol is waiting for (strata-qwen38-thinking-v1-draft.1), and documents a large gfx1030 prompt-path win.

Run	Folder	Prompt-4k tok/s	Prompt-16k tok/s	TTFT 4k / 16k (s)	Short decode tok/s	Sanity
baseline	bench/results/2026-10-21-standard-rx-6900-xt-baca09ad	428.2	447.3	9.60 / 36.68	51.1	12/12
tuned	bench/results/2026-10-21-standard-rx-6900-xt-3030aef9	722.8 (+68.8%)	857.7 (+91.8%)	5.71 / 19.16	53.2	12/12

Both: status complete, 21 of 21 required requests finished, 0 failed, 0 skipped. The optional concurrency stage was not run. Duration after model load: 6 min 22 s (baseline), 4 min 51 s (tuned).

Related discussion

None for this submission. The AMD/RDNA2 side of the standard benchmark is new here; the same protocol's two-hardware pilot is what the draft is waiting for.

Hardware and software

• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT, 16.0 GiB (gfx1030, RDNA2, wave32, no WMMA)
• CPU: Intel Core i9-9900K @ 3.60 GHz (8 cores / 16 threads, AVX2 only); RAM 63.9 GiB; model storage on Samsung 980 PRO 2 TB NVMe
• OS: Windows 11 (10.0.26300); GPU driver 32.0.21043.19003; ROCm bundled with the engine (10.2.0a20260930)
• Strata 0.2.2, commit 011c9e600a93bbc9fd451c563501b5831c32bbca
• Engine 0.1.47 from the official Windows hip-rdna2 package of the 0.2.2 signed feed (not a local build): BUILD.json commit 76f90e58, archs gfx1030,gfx1031, archive strata-engine-0.1.47-windows-x86_64-hip-rdna2.tar.gz sha256 f9e8954f2bf1c153994441ffd69006f0492e1d8300650098058ede1a4d7c742a

Model

• ISTA-DASLab/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next-GSQ-RCO-GGUF, IQ2_XS, revision ed59f92082b1e93c0e96d60a8b11aab089b52f09
• Source weights Qwen/Qwen3.8-Flash-Next revision de4b8e4d43b917e7706784d8bb445c9af86a3540; tokenizer pinned to the quantization repository revision
• Per-file SHA-256 values are in each results.json

Configuration

Shared by both runs: --spec 4 --spec-min-p 0.5 --max-context 65536 --kv int8 --kv-resident 32768 --prefill auto --expert-cache auto, one server slot, STRATA_SPEC_COUPLED=1, STRATA_SPEC_GUMBEL=1.

Only these differ in the tuned run:

Setting	Baseline	Tuned
STRATA_HIP_PROMPT_F16	unset	1
STRATA_ROUTE_RESIDENT	0.5	1.0
--pcie-frac	unset (start-up probe)	0.15

STRATA_HIP_PROMPT_F16=1 runs the prompt's 16-bit GEMMs as FP16 in and out, which the engine log says is what rocBLAS is tuned for on gfx103x; it is not bit-identical to the default. No other engine, model or sampler setting changed between the runs, and each run started from a freshly loaded engine (0 requests answered before the suite).

Approach

Results only: two folders under bench/results/, one per run, and no change to the engine, the tools, the protocol or any document. Each folder holds the runner's own README.md, results.json, outputs.jsonl (every request with its usage, engine timings and client event offsets), config.json and provenance/ (corpus manifest and the chat template used).

The two runs are deliberately in one pull request: the baseline and the tuned arm are the same machine, the same engine and the same model, so they are the comparison the tuning was based on.

Validation

Passed:

• strata bench run --profile <config> --suite standard-v1 --track custom --model-revision ed59f92082b1e93c0e96d60a8b11aab089b52f09 --source-revision de4b8e4d43b917e7706784d8bb445c9af86a3540 --tokenizer-revision ed59f92082b1e93c0e96d60a8b11aab089b52f09 --quantization "GSQ-RCO IQ2_XS" - two runs on Strata commit 011c9e600a93bbc9fd451c563501b5831c32bbca (v0.2.2) with engine 0.1.47 from the official Windows hip-rdna2 package, Windows 11, driver 32.0.21043.19003 - both runs report Status: complete. 21 of 21 required requests finished, 0 failed, 0 skipped, and strata bench report <folder> re-validates each saved result.
• The corpus check: the runner verified all 34 frozen fixtures against the bundle manifest before sending anything and refuses to run on a single differing byte.
• Independent corroboration that the prompt gain is not specific to this workload, from tools/strata_bench.py on the same machine (different workload, temp 0, thinking off):
  • fresh 4K prompt 420.0 -> 731.0 tok/s (+74%), TTFT 9.60 -> 5.53 s
  • fresh 16K prompt 437.1 -> 844.7 tok/s (+93%), TTFT 36.77 -> 19.05 s
  • agent session first token 7.13 -> 5.28 s, decode 48.5 -> 56.9 tok/s

Failed:

• None. All twelve sanity cases passed in both runs (instruction 4/4, retrieval 4/4, tool calls 4/4), with identical pass sets.

Not run:

• The optional concurrency stage of the protocol (--optional-concurrency): not required by the protocol.
• The same protocol on the original (non-abliterated) weights, on another card, or on another backend: one machine, one model, one engine.
• Storage speed of the model files and background work on the machine: both are reported as "not measured" in the JSON. The machine is a desktop with normal Windows background load.

Quality

Sanity checks passed 12/12 in both runs (instruction 4/4, retrieval 4/4, tool calls 4/4), identical pass sets. This is a regression screen, not a quality measurement; no quality claim is made beyond it.

Limits

• The runner labels the engine "source build"; it is the official prebuilt hip-rdna2 package from the 0.2.2 feed. The archive hash above is the provenance.
• One engine session per run, no clock or power capture, no background-work record; the machine is a desktop with normal Windows background load.
• Both runs are custom track because the settings are not setup defaults; the baseline is the same installation with three setup-era switches left alone, not a stock 0.2.2 default.
• The tuned arm changes STRATA_HIP_PROMPT_F16, which is documented as not bit-identical to the default, so the two runs are not expected to produce identical tokens; no token-level comparison was made.
• Results for a derivative tuning of this machine only; the protocol's draft status still applies.

[Niko1221]

Thank you for measuring this and writing it up. We are building a Strata website with a page for community benchmarks, and results like these will be added there when it launches, so we are closing this pull request here; the numbers are not lost. If your numbers change with a new version, you are welcome to send them again.

[Vop3p]

Nice result with STRATA_HIP_PROMPT_F16=1. A few more settings moved the same card further on Windows (standard protocol, #4012, IQ3_S, engine 0.1.48 rdna2 package):

• --pcie-frac 0.2 together with --prefill 8192, one step in that run: 16K 799 -> 1,076 tok/s, decode 35 -> 42. The start-up rule picks the PCIe share from the link alone (0.35 there); on that PC the CPU serves missed experts faster than the link. auto stops the chunk at 6,144 on Windows (Windows HIP (RX 7900 XTX): a long prompt with --prefill 8192 / auto makes the commit charge jump ~70 GB in one second, the engine dies at the commit limit (0xC0000409); 7500 and below stay flat #1630, a 7900 XTX crash); 8,192 ran clean on the 6900 XT, with --vram-reserve-mib 1536 so Windows does not page.
• STRATA_HOST_CORE=sibling: +2-5%.

All of it, with what each setting does and a one-command installer: windows-rx6000.

Developed with an AI coding assistant; every number above was measured on the RX 6900 XT Windows machine described in #4012.