For sure they quickly move to q8, the output quality difference to bf16 is small compared to the speed/capacity gain
Some people here have remarked previously that while reduced precision doesn't show up in quick prompts, it does severely impact these models' ability to perform long running tasks - to the point that running these big models with severe quantization might be counterproductive as smaller but less quantized ones perform better.
Could this explain Opus?
Yeah q8 made so littler difference back when I was testing such things I'd be surprised if people could quickly notice that as a change. It's got to be either further quantized or some other type of optimization that kicks in when people notice the drop.