Noometry

Model comparison

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning NVIDIA

40.0

Rank #155 Confirmed

Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct Microsoft

29.3

Rank #314 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher in 8 categories and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in instruction following, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 69.6 to 51.9.

Side by side

Nemotron 3.5 LightningPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
ProviderNVIDIAMicrosoft
Noometry Index40.029.3
Released2026-08-112024-04-23
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window262K—
Max output262K—
Input $ / M tokens$0.05—
Output $ / M tokens$0.20—
Results tracked1832

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Category by category

Coding Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 40.4 (#141), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.9 (#318)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Coding13751101
LiveBench Coding—20.3%

Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 26.8 (#127), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 14.8 (#323)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Hard Prompts13371100
LiveBench Reasoning—15.9%
LiveBench Data Analysis—30.3%
Adversarial NLI—58.1%
BIG-Bench Hard—79.1%
HellaSwag—77%
LiveBench—24%
WinoGrande—81.5%

Math Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#155), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 27.6 (#248)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Math13591151
LiveBench Math—17.6%

Knowledge Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 37.5 (#154), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 29.1 (#240)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Expert13561067
ARC (AI2) Challenge—90.7%
MMLU—75.7%
OpenBookQA—88%
TriviaQA—58.1%

Multilingual Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#180), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 28.5 (#272)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Non-English12951058
LMArena Chinese13591061
LMArena French13661135
LMArena German12821080
LMArena Japanese1206966
LMArena Korean1238894
LMArena Russian12531111
LMArena Spanish13451111

Instruction Following Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.6 (#170), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 51.9 (#292)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Instruction Following13181087
LiveBench Instruction Following—47.2%

Long Context Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#165), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 33.0 (#267)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Longer Query13141088

Writing & Preference Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#201), Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct: 31.1 (#284)

BenchmarkNemotron 3.5 LightningPhi 3 Small 8k Instruct
LMArena Text13271110
LMArena Creative Writing12541083
LMArena Multi-Turn13281068
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1280—
LiveBench Language—12.9%

Frequently asked questions

Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better than Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.0 to 29.3 on the Noometry Index.

Is Nemotron 3.5 Lightning or Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct better for coding?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.4 versus 27.9 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Nemotron 3.5 Lightning and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Small 8k Instruct has 32.

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