Model comparison
Granite 4.2 3b vs Llama 3.1-8B
Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 22.8 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 3.1-8B in 0 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Granite 4.2 3b leads 35.6 to 8.0.
Side by side
| Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Meta |
| Noometry Index | 39.0 | 22.8 |
| Released | — | 2024-07-23 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | — | 128K |
| Max output | — | 4K |
| Input $ / M tokens | — | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | — | $0.08 |
| Results tracked | 11 | 43 |
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Category by category
Coding Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 39.4 (#146), Llama 3.1-8B: 19.9 (#335)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1363 | 1195 |
| SciCode | — | 13.2% |
| WeirdML | — | 1.7% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 32.8% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 40.5% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 62.8% |
| MBPP+ | — | 55.6% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: —, Llama 3.1-8B: 22.3 (#123)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 25.8% |
| BALROG | — | 15.1% |
Reasoning Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 25.0 (#136), Llama 3.1-8B: 14.5 (#316)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1308 | 1175 |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| DTBench | — | 50.9% |
| LMCA | — | 5.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 116.48 |
| PIQA | — | 81.2% |
Math Not comparable
Granite 4.2 3b: —, Llama 3.1-8B: 9.5 (#311)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 1.7% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 13.7% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1179 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 22.9% |
| GSM8K | — | 82.4% |
Knowledge Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 35.6 (#169), Llama 3.1-8B: 8.0 (#302)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1313 | 1144 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 27% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 40.6% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 24.7% |
| BoolQ | — | 82.8% |
| MMLU | — | 56.1% |
Multilingual Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 42.4 (#193), Llama 3.1-8B: 34.2 (#244)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1268 | 1148 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1268 | 1151 |
| LMArena Russian | 1249 | 1158 |
| LMArena French | — | 1176 |
| LMArena German | — | 1144 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1061 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1053 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1169 |
Instruction Following Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 67.2 (#195), Llama 3.1-8B: 59.1 (#253)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1271 | 1159 |
| IFEval | — | 74.3% |
Long Context Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 39.3 (#179), Llama 3.1-8B: 35.8 (#233)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1293 | 1182 |
Writing & Preference Granite 4.2 3b leads
Granite 4.2 3b: 47.9 (#202), Llama 3.1-8B: 29.9 (#285)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.2 3b | Llama 3.1-8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1295 | 1187 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1215 | 1154 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1293 | 1172 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 713 |
| WildBench | — | 68.7% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.2 3b better than Llama 3.1-8B?
Granite 4.2 3b is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.0 to 22.8 on the Noometry Index.
Is Granite 4.2 3b or Llama 3.1-8B better for coding?
Granite 4.2 3b scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.4 versus 19.9 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.2 3b and Llama 3.1-8B share?
11 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.2 3b has 11 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3.1-8B has 43.