Naptastic

In order to pick the “best” model one must consider:

1. Compatibility: what formats you can use,
2. Resources: depending on your situation, you might become limited by GPU speed, VRAM, CPU speed, DRAM, hard disk space, or (less likely) bandwidth.
3. Tradeoffs: Fast, Cheap, Good: choose at most two. (“Good” and “Easy” draw from the same well.)
4. Surprises: probably some other considerations, and finally,
5. your use case.

This grumpy pile of text is gradually turning into a guide–hopefully not too misguided–for selecting models.

Probably not 100% guarantee, but… we can reduce the chances of a wasted download.

The situation is really complicated but this is a FAQ so I'll keep it simple:

1. Read the model card. If it doesn't have one, don't download it. The model card is also the most likely place to find reasons a model might not work for you.
2. If you know the model will fit completely in VRAM, the best performance comes from GPTQ models. (2023-12; I haven't personally verified this.)
3. If the model will not fit completely in VRAM, you cannot use GPTQ; use GGUF instead.
   • GGUF comes in multiple quantization formats. You only need to download one. Use Q5_K_M if you're not sure.

More details on the formats can be found here.

Sure. If you find a good one, send it to me and I'll add a link here.

• HuggingFace leaderboard contains all kinds of scores you might care about.
• u/WolframRavenwolf is the only Redditor I see posting in-depth comparisons of models.
• NSFW Chatbot Leaderboard exists

Yes. Nap does not know how. Please ask for edit permission and fill this section in. <3

I only know of one more: Use a model that someone else in your situation is already using, and they already know it works well. I'd like to collect a few (dozen) such reports here, if possible. Also what hardware, software, and speed you get, if possible.

• brain: Passes almost every AGI test given over a 40-year period. 90b tensors, 100t weights, runs on a completely proprietary stack. When it's thinking hard, it generates about 14-16 tokens/second. (It has almost been discovered once.)

I very much subscribe to the “Stone Soup” philosophy of open-source. The problem is that everyone wants to be the person bringing the stone. But stone soup only needs one stone! We need tables, utensils, meat, vegetables, seasonings, firewood, and people to tend the fire and stir the pot and cut up the ingredients…

Please consider how many people have put how much time into generating and assembling this information. Yes it's naptastic organizing the page (at least right now) but all the info is coming from other people. I do not want to scare people off from asking questions; otherwise I don't know what to put in the FAQ! But if you are going to bring questions, please also be willing to put some effort into figuring it out yourself, and report back when you have successes.

Important note: YOU CAN USE AI TO HELP WRITE STUFF!!! It's not cheating!

Keep content on this Wiki professionally appropriate. Remember, we are all responsible for how our own behavior affects others, including people who are different from us.

1. SUCCEED!!! Get something working, even if it's not working as well as you want. Getting better and faster results is part of this FAQ too.
2. Tell me about it! What hardware worked? What models? What problems did you encounter and how did you solve them? How fast does it generate?
3. Contribute to the actual open-source projects. That is where the most work needs to be done.
4. Improve the FAQ. Specifically, consider this question: What would have been helpful to know earlier? What do you wish someone had explained before you spent a bunch of time learning it the hard way? That's what this FAQ is about: every one of us who self-hosts should make it easier for anyone who does it next. Wiki-specific items:
   • If somebody wants to set up SSO for DokuWiki so we can just use our Google accounts or whatever… that's on my to-do list, but it's so far down I'll probably never get to it.
   • (I'm not gonna switch to MediaWiki.)

And now, without further ado:

Know your goals. It is critical that you know what you want your AI to do for you. Even better if you have it written down.

(At least not yet, or not well)

• Arithmetic, including counting

This is really not an answerable question. TODO this needs a fuller/better explanation.

• see formats-faq for now; this deserves its own page

• Different software is useful for different goals. See the Applications section below for more detailed information about each application.

(nap definitely needs help with this)

• need a glossary

• Start with README.MD for the software you want to use. Seriously.
• Links to how-to's

• Read README.MD for the software you want to use again. Seriously.
• Discord servers
• subreddits
• Links to other resources
• If you get help, please give back. Update the documentation. Help other people where you can. Fix code where you can.

You Need A Better Environment. (We all do. IMO there isn't a good environment out there, and… that's a rant for another day.)

• flash-attention - Needs testing!
• option tuning - nap knows nothing; any input would be appreciated
• --sdp-attention option says it makes things faster. Needs testing!

What is RAG and how do I use it?

What else can my AI do?

link to formats-faq for now

• Oobabooga text-generation-webui
  • Perhaps the most popular starting point. It's (relatively) easy to deploy and use, but also provides a pretty full feature-set including support for plugins.
  • Plugin to add image generation by integrating
• sooooo much belongs here and I don't even know where to begin

I want to establish some ground rules before listing plugins, so that it doesn't turn into a free-for-all of