r/LocalLLaMA: Gemma4-12B's Multi-Token Prediction Architecture Trades Reasoning Depth for Speed — Qwen 3.5-9B Outperforms on Same Reasoning Prompt at Apple M3 Max

A developer running llama.cpp on an Apple M3 Max 64GB finds Gemma4-12B delivers 47 tok/s with Multi-Token Prediction enabled versus 29–36 tok/s without, but argues the MTP architectural change is 'too big a tradeoff' in reasoning quality. Side-by-side results on a targeted reasoning question show Qwen 3.5-9B — a smaller 9B parameter model — producing more structurally complete answers, suggesting Gemma4-12B's speed gains come at a meaningful reasoning cost. The benchmark adds to a cluster of community findings questioning whether Gemma4-12B's architectural shifts favor throughput over depth for reasoning-heavy workloads.