Best models for regular machines (16gb ram)

Lots of new models coming out recently but not that many that aren’t massive resource hogs.

Gemma 4 e4b and e2b seem to be the strongest right now that won’t eat up all machine resources.

What are other seeing here? Microsoft releasing Aion Instruct soon too.

Do you think we’ll see the same progress with small language models that we’ve been seeing with the bigger models.

30b param model class has had a lot of new entrants but you can’t run them easily without lots of ram that most people don’t have.