IME Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct (or even 1.5B) have been quite remarkable, but I haven't done that heavy testing.
- EXAONE-3.5-2.4B-Instruct - Llama-3.2-3B-Instruct-uncensored - qwq-lcot-3b-instruct - qwen2.5-3b-instruct
These have been very interesting tiny models, they can do text processing task and can handle story telling. The Llama-3.2 is way to sensitive to random stuff so get the uncensored or abliterated versions
IME Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct (or even 1.5B) have been quite remarkable, but I haven't done that heavy testing.