Model comparison
Granite 4.2 3b vs Llama 3.1-405B
Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.4 to 30.7 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 11 shared benchmarks.
MetaSummary
- They share 11 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.2 3b scores higher in 7 categories and Llama 3.1-405B in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Granite 4.2 3b leads 26.0 to 16.8.
Side by side
| Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-405B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Meta |
| Noometry Index | 39.4 | 30.7 |
| Released | — | 2024-07-23 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | — | — |
| Max output | — | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | — |
| Results tracked | 11 | 42 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 40.0 (#151), Llama 3.1-405B: 33.1 (#262)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-405B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1361 | 1291 |
| WeirdML | — | 21.4% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: —, Llama 3.1-405B: 21.0 (#140)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-405B |
|---|---|---|
| TheAgentCompany | — | 7.4% |
| Cybench | — | 7.5% |
Reasoning Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 26.0 (#138), Llama 3.1-405B: 16.8 (#300)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-405B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1306 | 1269 |
| SimpleBench | — | 23% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 45% |
| DTBench | — | 61.4% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 82.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 128.75 |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.9 |
| HellaSwag | — | 89.2% |
| PIQA | — | 85.9% |
| WinoGrande | — | 89.2% |
Math Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: —, Llama 3.1-405B: 18.4 (#290)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-405B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 9.7% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 24.9% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1281 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 49.8% |
Knowledge Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 36.3 (#171), Llama 3.1-405B: 30.4 (#227)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-405B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1315 | 1243 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 50.9% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 72.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 17.6% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 52.2% |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 95.3% |
| MMLU | — | 84.5% |
| TriviaQA | — | 82.7% |
Multilingual Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 42.1 (#198), Llama 3.1-405B: 40.7 (#214)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-405B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1268 | 1248 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1269 | 1242 |
| LMArena Russian | 1249 | 1265 |
| LMArena French | — | 1279 |
| LMArena German | — | 1252 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1208 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1184 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1260 |
Instruction Following Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 67.1 (#200), Llama 3.1-405B: 65.9 (#214)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-405B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1273 | 1259 |
| IFEval | — | 81.1% |
Long Context Too close to call
Granite 4.2 3b: 39.2 (#185), Llama 3.1-405B: 38.4 (#197)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-405B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1291 | 1266 |
Writing & Preference Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 47.2 (#212), Llama 3.1-405B: 38.9 (#251)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-405B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1293 | 1284 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1205 | 1262 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1290 | 1297 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 870 |
| WildBench | — | 78.3% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.2 3b better than Llama 3.1-405B?
Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.4 to 30.7 on the Noometry Index.
Is Granite 4.2 3b or Llama 3.1-405B better for coding?
Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.0 versus 33.1 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 3b and Llama 3.1-405B share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 3b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3.1-405B has 42.