Strata 0.2.6: fixes from the stress tests, a faster DeepSeek on big-RAM PCs, and an uninstaller that finishes the job
The app and the Terminal are 0.2.6. The DeepSeek engine and Control are 0.1.51. The Qwen engines stay at 0.1.50: nothing in them changed, so their packages are the same files as in 0.2.5.
What you will notice
- Uninstalling on Windows removes the program folder. Strata's own app, host and engine processes are stopped first, so the folder no longer stays behind after you have used the app. This fixes the known issue of 0.2.5. Only processes that run from the install folder are stopped.
- The monitor handles a small integrated graphics chip next to a real card. With All GPUs, a Radeon or Intel chip inside the CPU is left out of the totals and the count when a real card is present. The hardware report gives each card a stable id, because AMD, Intel and NVIDIA each number their cards from 0.
- About no longer shows the placeholder engine version (
strata-engine 0.1.0) while the real one is still being read, and after an engine update it shows the new version, not the old one. - A DeepSeek model shows its one 8K context on the Models screen, as in the guided setup, instead of the 32K default.
- A model whose files are all gone is not listed as a download in Storage and Manage models.
- A chat request with no message is answered with a 400 ("messages must be a non-empty list"), as OpenAI does. A reply of one token shows no tokens-per-second figure; a one-token probe used to read 1,250 tok/s in the monitor.
DeepSeek is faster on PCs with a lot of RAM
When all the CPU-side experts fit in RAM with 8 GiB to spare, the engine now copies all of them in at load and runs without the demand store (all or none, never a part). --mmap-experts on or off, --ssd-cache N and DS4_STORE_GB still do what you set. On Windows the check also needs the commit room (RAM plus page file), so a PC with a small page file is not pushed into paging. A PC that cannot hold the whole set, such as a 46 GB RAM PC with a 12 GB card, keeps the store as before and gets the same answers and speed.
| Test PC | Set | Decode before | Decode now |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 x R9700, 251 GB RAM | 2.00, code | 24.5 tok/s | 27.6 tok/s |
| 1 x R9700, 251 GB RAM | 2.00, agent | 21.9 tok/s | 27.1 tok/s |
| 1 x R9700, 251 GB RAM | 2.25, code | 26.1 tok/s | 29.6 tok/s |
| 1 x R9700, 251 GB RAM | 2.25, agent | 23.1 tok/s | 27.0 tok/s |
| 4 x R9700, 251 GB RAM | 2.00, code | 76.6 / 77.0 tok/s | 84.7 / 84.7 tok/s |
| 4 x R9700, 251 GB RAM | 2.00, agent | 74.2 tok/s | 83.3 tok/s |
Loading takes longer: one R9700 loads the 2.00 set in about 55 s instead of 34 s, because it copies 108 GB. The answers are the same as with --ssd-cache 0 --mmap-experts off, which we checked again on the release package. The rule comes from Project Maya (MIT).
Updating
- App: the in-app updater installs the new installer. Your engine stays.
- Terminal: run
strata update. It fetches Control 0.1.51. Your Qwen engine stays at 0.1.50. - DeepSeek engine: updates itself on the next
strata launch(0.1.50 to 0.1.51).
AMD in WSL
The Linux AMD (HIP) engines hang inside WSL because the GPU bridge there never finishes a command. Setup and strata launch now say so and point to the Strata app or Terminal for Windows. They warn and go on; nothing is refused. NVIDIA cards work under WSL as before.
Small things
- Setup no longer stops with "can't reach GitHub" when you point it at a local update feed.
- The README and the docs have the new guide set: one installer per system, DeepSeek in the app and the Terminal, and the model order in all seven languages. File names in them are the 0.2.6 ones.
Downloads
Three installers, the three Control packages (0.1.51), 13 Qwen engine packages (0.1.50, unchanged), 3 DeepSeek engine packages (0.1.51: Windows CUDA 13, Linux CUDA 13, Linux AMD rx9070), plus strata-feed.json with its signature, latest.json, install-manifest.txt, install.sh, install.ps1 and SHA256SUMS.txt.
Strata is free and open source. If it runs well on your PC, a coffee keeps the work on it going: