There are extreme diminishing returns in real world performance as models get bigger. 10x bigger might mean 5-10% better on benchmarks, a margin that can easily mean it's functionally equivalent in real world use or even a worse performer depending on the context it's being used in, and how good you are at providing meaningful context.

Of course the bigger model embeds more knowledge, but when neither model has the knowledge necessary to perform the task, hy3 makes idiotic decisions all the time whereas gemma 31b has a decent hit rate.

hy3 feels like someone who's read a lot of books and says the right words but has nothing of substance between their ears, gemma feels like a reasonably intelligent person who doesn't understand the domain, the latter is muuuch easier to work with than the former.