alt.freeweights.text / Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF
From: bartowski <huggingface.co/bartowski>Newsgroups: alt.freeweights.textSubject:

Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF

Date: 2026-11-15Commit: 10972d4Signed: 2DC28CC7B26A283B ✓

Text generation model. Gguf weights, 140 GB in all. Published by bartowski under Apache-2.0.

text140GBSailor2-8B-Chat-GGUFggufpermissive
FactsParamsnot statedSize140 GBFormatsggufTasktext generationLicenseApache-2.0From sourcepermissive
$ fw get bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF
# manifest sha256 d8d3e4defca4… · 140 GB · 28 files
$ fw verify ./Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF
From sourceHosted (signed)bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUFLast check: 2026-11-15 04:55 UTC

Get help: custom fine-tune or private deploy. We review your setup before we quote.

Quantized of Sailor2-8B-Chat.

Works with

Convert with

Overview

Size
140 GB
Weights
3.09 GB (smallest of 25 GGUF variants)
Parameters
not stated
Formats
gguf
Task
text generation
License
Apache-2.0 (permissive)
Files
28, each with a sha256
Publisher
bartowski
Added
2026-11-15
Section
alt.freeweights.text
Lineage

Original release from the publisher.

Base model: sail/Sailor2-8B-Chat

Where these bytes come from
Publisher at the pinned commit→You

Sources are tried in order. A file counts only when its size and sha256 match the manifest. Sources are checked when you ask for them, not on a timer.

Sources
BadgeHostLast checkResult
From sourcehuggingface.co2026-11-15 04:55 UTCpassed

Model card

From the publisher at commit 10972d4. Shown as plain text with links; images open at the publisher.

Llamacpp imatrix Quantizations of Sailor2-8B-Chat#

Using llama.cpp release b4273 for quantization.

Original model: https://huggingface.co/sail/Sailor2-8B-Chat

All quants made using imatrix option with dataset from here

Run them in LM Studio

Prompt format#

<|im_start|>system
{system_prompt}<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>user
{prompt}<|im_end|>
<|im_start|>assistant

Download a file (not the whole branch) from below:#

FilenameQuant typeFile SizeSplitDescription
Sailor2-8B-Chat-f16.gguff1617.10GBfalseFull F16 weights.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q8_0.ggufQ8_09.09GBfalseExtremely high quality, generally unneeded but max available quant.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q6_K_L.ggufQ6_K_L7.28GBfalseUses Q8_0 for embed and output weights. Very high quality, near perfect, recommended.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q6_K.ggufQ6_K7.02GBfalseVery high quality, near perfect, recommended.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q5_K_L.ggufQ5_K_L6.44GBfalseUses Q8_0 for embed and output weights. High quality, recommended.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q5_K_M.ggufQ5_K_M6.10GBfalseHigh quality, recommended.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q5_K_S.ggufQ5_K_S5.96GBfalseHigh quality, recommended.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_K_L.ggufQ4_K_L5.65GBfalseUses Q8_0 for embed and output weights. Good quality, recommended.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_K_M.ggufQ4_K_M5.24GBfalseGood quality, default size for most use cases, recommended.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q3_K_XL.ggufQ3_K_XL5.05GBfalseUses Q8_0 for embed and output weights. Lower quality but usable, good for low RAM availability.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_K_S.ggufQ4_K_S4.99GBfalseSlightly lower quality with more space savings, recommended.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_0.ggufQ4_04.97GBfalseLegacy format, offers online repacking for ARM CPU inference.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_0_8_8.ggufQ4_0_8_84.96GBfalseOptimized for ARM and AVX inference. Requires 'sve' support for ARM (see details below). Don't use on Mac.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_0_4_8.ggufQ4_0_4_84.96GBfalseOptimized for ARM inference. Requires 'i8mm' support (see details below). Don't use on Mac.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_0_4_4.ggufQ4_0_4_44.96GBfalseOptimized for ARM inference. Should work well on all ARM chips, not for use with GPUs. Don't use on Mac.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ4_NL.ggufIQ4_NL4.96GBfalseSimilar to IQ4_XS, but slightly larger. Offers online repacking for ARM CPU inference.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ4_XS.ggufIQ4_XS4.71GBfalseDecent quality, smaller than Q4_K_S with similar performance, recommended.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q3_K_L.ggufQ3_K_L4.57GBfalseLower quality but usable, good for low RAM availability.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q3_K_M.ggufQ3_K_M4.26GBfalseLow quality.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ3_M.ggufIQ3_M3.99GBfalseMedium-low quality, new method with decent performance comparable to Q3_K_M.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q3_K_S.ggufQ3_K_S3.89GBfalseLow quality, not recommended.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q2_K_L.ggufQ2_K_L3.89GBfalseUses Q8_0 for embed and output weights. Very low quality but surprisingly usable.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ3_XS.ggufIQ3_XS3.73GBfalseLower quality, new method with decent performance, slightly better than Q3_K_S.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q2_K.ggufQ2_K3.36GBfalseVery low quality but surprisingly usable.
Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ2_M.ggufIQ2_M3.09GBfalseRelatively low quality, uses SOTA techniques to be surprisingly usable.

Embed/output weights#

Some of these quants (Q3_K_XL, Q4_K_L etc) are the standard quantization method with the embeddings and output weights quantized to Q8_0 instead of what they would normally default to.

Downloading using huggingface-cli#

Click to view download instructions

First, make sure you have hugginface-cli installed:

pip install -U "huggingface_hub[cli]"

Then, you can target the specific file you want:

huggingface-cli download bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF --include "Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_K_M.gguf" --local-dir ./

If the model is bigger than 50GB, it will have been split into multiple files. In order to download them all to a local folder, run:

huggingface-cli download bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF --include "Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q8_0/*" --local-dir ./

You can either specify a new local-dir (Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q8_0) or download them all in place (./)

Q4_0_X_X information#

New: Thanks to efforts made to have online repacking of weights in this PR, you can now just use Q4_0 if your llama.cpp has been compiled for your ARM device.

Similarly, if you want to get slightly better performance, you can use IQ4_NL thanks to this PR which will also repack the weights for ARM, though only the 4_4 for now. The loading time may be slower but it will result in an overall speed incrase.

Click to view Q4_0_X_X information

These are NOT for Metal (Apple) or GPU (nvidia/AMD/intel) offloading, only ARM chips (and certain AVX2/AVX512 CPUs).

If you're using an ARM chip, the Q4_0_X_X quants will have a substantial speedup. Check out Q4_0_4_4 speed comparisons on the original pull request

To check which one would work best for your ARM chip, you can check AArch64 SoC features (thanks EloyOn!).

If you're using a CPU that supports AVX2 or AVX512 (typically server CPUs and AMD's latest Zen5 CPUs) and are not offloading to a GPU, the Q4_0_8_8 may offer a nice speed as well:

Click to view benchmarks on an AVX2 system (EPYC7702)

modelsizeparamsbackendthreadstestt/s% (vs Q4_0)
qwen2 3B Q4_01.70 GiB3.09 BCPU64pp512204.03 ± 1.03100%
qwen2 3B Q4_01.70 GiB3.09 BCPU64pp1024282.92 ± 0.19100%
qwen2 3B Q4_01.70 GiB3.09 BCPU64pp2048259.49 ± 0.44100%
qwen2 3B Q4_01.70 GiB3.09 BCPU64tg12839.12 ± 0.27100%
qwen2 3B Q4_01.70 GiB3.09 BCPU64tg25639.31 ± 0.69100%
qwen2 3B Q4_01.70 GiB3.09 BCPU64tg51240.52 ± 0.03100%
qwen2 3B Q4_K_M1.79 GiB3.09 BCPU64pp512301.02 ± 1.74147%
qwen2 3B Q4_K_M1.79 GiB3.09 BCPU64pp1024287.23 ± 0.20101%
qwen2 3B Q4_K_M1.79 GiB3.09 BCPU64pp2048262.77 ± 1.81101%
qwen2 3B Q4_K_M1.79 GiB3.09 BCPU64tg12818.80 ± 0.9948%
qwen2 3B Q4_K_M1.79 GiB3.09 BCPU64tg25624.46 ± 3.0483%
qwen2 3B Q4_K_M1.79 GiB3.09 BCPU64tg51236.32 ± 3.5990%
qwen2 3B Q4_0_8_81.69 GiB3.09 BCPU64pp512271.71 ± 3.53133%
qwen2 3B Q4_0_8_81.69 GiB3.09 BCPU64pp1024279.86 ± 45.63100%
qwen2 3B Q4_0_8_81.69 GiB3.09 BCPU64pp2048320.77 ± 5.00124%
qwen2 3B Q4_0_8_81.69 GiB3.09 BCPU64tg12843.51 ± 0.05111%
qwen2 3B Q4_0_8_81.69 GiB3.09 BCPU64tg25643.35 ± 0.09110%
qwen2 3B Q4_0_8_81.69 GiB3.09 BCPU64tg51242.60 ± 0.31105%

Q4_0_8_8 offers a nice bump to prompt processing and a small bump to text generation

Which file should I choose?#

Click here for details

A great write up with charts showing various performances is provided by Artefact2 here

The first thing to figure out is how big a model you can run. To do this, you'll need to figure out how much RAM and/or VRAM you have.

If you want your model running as FAST as possible, you'll want to fit the whole thing on your GPU's VRAM. Aim for a quant with a file size 1-2GB smaller than your GPU's total VRAM.

If you want the absolute maximum quality, add both your system RAM and your GPU's VRAM together, then similarly grab a quant with a file size 1-2GB Smaller than that total.

Next, you'll need to decide if you want to use an 'I-quant' or a 'K-quant'.

If you don't want to think too much, grab one of the K-quants. These are in format 'QX_K_X', like Q5_K_M.

If you want to get more into the weeds, you can check out this extremely useful feature chart:

llama.cpp feature matrix

But basically, if you're aiming for below Q4, and you're running cuBLAS (Nvidia) or rocBLAS (AMD), you should look towards the I-quants. These are in format IQX_X, like IQ3_M. These are newer and offer better performance for their size.

These I-quants can also be used on CPU and Apple Metal, but will be slower than their K-quant equivalent, so speed vs performance is a tradeoff you'll have to decide.

The I-quants are not compatible with Vulcan, which is also AMD, so if you have an AMD card double check if you're using the rocBLAS build or the Vulcan build. At the time of writing this, LM Studio has a preview with ROCm support, and other inference engines have specific builds for ROCm.

Credits#

Thank you kalomaze and Dampf for assistance in creating the imatrix calibration dataset.

Thank you ZeroWw for the inspiration to experiment with embed/output.

Want to support my work? Visit my ko-fi page here: https://ko-fi.com/bartowski

Files

28 files · 140 GBWeights 3.09 GB (smallest of 25 GGUF variants). Sizes and sha256 from the signed manifest.
Show all 28 files with their sha256
FileSizesha256
.gitattributes3.17 KB2137a2dbf51273c65eff16b2b78541260aa7293fa2765762b75173763b894b37
README.md14.2 KB2bb27e6be1a9b634b83071cf434af973efac84e50d5268a51b5f1dd12918136d
Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ2_M.gguf3.09 GBf21f856b83fa6c8325855a2e6007acdde1c57ed8b14a36462c4f639a91e04826
Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ3_M.gguf3.99 GBf42496a88d50c815137ade124993c4df148b92ee402a70ae163dd7e236213101
Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ3_XS.gguf3.73 GBc16303c076798463786c096bfcaef53398829220e1dfa1e16213183178fd2fe3
Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ4_NL.gguf4.96 GB993f5ee7012ee894b2ee259e269bcdf371a6cc36f0638ade24488cfba56718c1
Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ4_XS.gguf4.71 GBb1ce394ea746483d17e32255db4ca3075282bae767f20a3c05a5881ab54a7291
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q2_K.gguf3.36 GBbf6e6b1e71c37dd11d0816d8a06e68471654926af0ffbf6ac43ec9d015029536
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q2_K_L.gguf3.89 GB1945b40f3c363760be9a7cd19a0f10c7cf7187d7793c13313fcd65598ea5704d
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q3_K_L.gguf4.57 GB077e773ab8f4d6de15246b01b8f365867769a183fc31cd7812708dd10e533c08
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q3_K_M.gguf4.26 GB6ba945fb1f4a50525bad894633e4ad1294754506cd01f1f53b82d047b250db7a
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q3_K_S.gguf3.89 GBc427b05cd976b4900af0a33f958235a48e5bb7154c5872ae7194f1958a5b53f9
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q3_K_XL.gguf5.05 GB1228fe1558a87d3392cfcb4b8e46064c7f41e7c3dc48a384cee4f57769be6eda
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_0.gguf4.97 GB6eeb7d1ea022b910721cfac29144274179c6032690a26998dc8f131ca3a24377
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_0_4_4.gguf4.96 GBcccc07fbff6ee0e2fae09814d7517225d60fba985596067f8a2ebf3916e8189e
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_0_4_8.gguf4.96 GB1db042db691018d794aa3a1be9f712d4a73b96f43700880d9a3e27524da3ef45
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_0_8_8.gguf4.96 GB7c623170737bc8e4dd1ac1441a0576c4ac938481c679f3fec3f822f3f3a15f1e
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_K_L.gguf5.65 GBe78933a162530e911899fba1681e4ec2f8a7565a37cf98bc3ea0f92ff49fcf05
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_K_M.gguf5.24 GB1a6aaadd6f6ef9c2290d66b348ebcbd6fdec542834cde622498fbd467d966103
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q4_K_S.gguf4.99 GB221988408ec63352e2e7a9679584b34ee3803c7cb0d4b39fd9e2d8d7060fa65e
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q5_K_L.gguf6.44 GB40ea95f45df9954efb9c6fe90058a262a56250fbe91e6a9f5172bdd28193d34c
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q5_K_M.gguf6.10 GB78ff26df7d27d1eda130bd6e116b216001d7f58639d7bd0ede32c365e996f734
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q5_K_S.gguf5.96 GB51f21ad64bde9df0c5f6f26c31720b19e4232e331eaaf7a177b495f1719201a9
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q6_K.gguf7.02 GBe964793a00ba386ae2d44c8991545ae1a6c594054abf0077df9ca793efc0f457
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q6_K_L.gguf7.28 GB4a8cc963ce4df566d8cfbbbc706735bb6623c2b056829c413d84e08fb22ceb9c
Sailor2-8B-Chat-Q8_0.gguf9.09 GB6d45e1a5d4fa424b729948b216181d958e6a7ed6850bb2e38a34ea6df154c3af
Sailor2-8B-Chat-f16.gguf17.1 GBfd0179d385a1c091786955c169c01e14a50948161868a1f6fa6f07c2c1ded861
Sailor2-8B-Chat.imatrix5.18 MB31cef42ee2b4e6f83863c7628a0f3e41c590acb2c1a9f4384920ed5f1cda9911
VersionsEach time the pinned upstream commit or file list changed in this repo. Newest first.
Upstream commitDateContents
10972d4314 pinned now2026-11-15 04:55 UTC28 files · 140 GB

Use it

$ fw get bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF
# manifest sha256 d8d3e4defca4… · 140 GB · 28 files
$ fw verify ./Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF
fw.pyChecks the signature and every sha256, tries each source in order, resumes.
$ python3 fw.py get https://freeweights.allternit.com/manifests/bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF.json --dir ./Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF $ python3 fw.py verify ./Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF ./bartowski__Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF.json
hfThe Hugging Face CLI with one setting. Same repo id.
$ HF_ENDPOINT=https://freeweights.allternit.com hf download bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF --revision 10972d4314c4f4f332b07c327103b85e9027234a --local-dir ./Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF
llama.cppDownload one GGUF variant (Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ2_M, 3.09 GB), then serve it.
$ HF_ENDPOINT=https://freeweights.allternit.com hf download bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF --include "Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ2_M*" --local-dir ./Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF $ llama-server -m ./Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF/Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ2_M.gguf
OllamaMake an Ollama model from the downloaded file.
$ printf 'FROM ./Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF/Sailor2-8B-Chat-IQ2_M.gguf\n' > Modelfile $ ollama create sailor2-8b-chat-gguf -f Modelfile

License

Name
Apache License 2.0
Id
Apache-2.0
Class
Permissive
Redistribution
yes
Listing
Hosted (signed)
Decided
License as declared by the publisher. No person read it. 2026-11-15
Text in
README.md
Text sha256
2bb27e6be1a9b634b83071cf434af973efac84e50d5268a51b5f1dd12918136d
Terms gate
No extra terms beyond the license.

Read the license text

Licenses are checked against the license table. A custom license passes only after a person reads it.

Provenance

From: bartowski <huggingface.co/bartowski>Newsgroups: alt.freeweights.textSubject: Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUFDate: 2026-11-15Commit: 10972d4Signed: 2DC28CC7B26A283B ✓
Upstream
bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF
Pinned commit
10972d4314c4f4f332b07c327103b85e9027234a
Manifest
Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF.json · .minisig
Manifest sha256
d8d3e4defca48b4d78bbb4da09cf6b20345371bab738391e0b31577e2c50c37f
Signature
minisign, Ed25519, key 2DC28CC7B26A283B
Created
2026-11-15 04:55 UTC
Generator
freeweights-manifest/0.1.0
Takedowns
None.

How to verify

$ curl -O https://freeweights.allternit.com/manifests/bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF.json $ curl -O https://freeweights.allternit.com/manifests/bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF.json.minisig $ minisign -Vm Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF.json -P RWQ7KGqyx4zCLXtUFOqvfv8L3g+8fpKJ1FsuxPyOYMF+4KufbUxKq1Oq $ shasum -a 256 <file> # compare with the Files tab

A manifest whose signature fails must be rejected. A file whose size or sha256 does not match must be discarded. Verify a download

Model tree

Parent

sail/Sailor2-8B-Chat · this model is a quantization of it

No model in the catalog names this one as its parent.

Get it
Download
$ HF_ENDPOINT=https://freeweights.allternit.com hf download bartowski/Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF
Open in Freeweights Studio

Pull, verify and run it in the Allternit app on Desktop, web or phone.

Signed manifest
minisign, key 2DC28CC7B26A283B. Sailor2-8B-Chat-GGUF.json. Provenance. Takedown history: none.
From: laion <huggingface.co/laion>Subject: a2-rl-e2egit_large-50-32B
From: laion <huggingface.co/laion>Subject: a3-rl-DCAgent_exp_rpt_e2egit-large-15-8B
From: laion <huggingface.co/laion>Subject: a3-rl-DCAgent_exp_rpt_e2egit-v2-10-8B
From: laion <huggingface.co/laion>Subject: a3-rl-DCAgent_exp_rpt_pymethods2test-large-80-8B
From: laion <huggingface.co/laion>Subject: a3-rl-DCAgent_exp_rpt_unitsyn-python-large-10-8B
From: laion <huggingface.co/laion>Subject: a3-rl-DCAgent_mix_h2_language_proportional-65-8B