Nemotron 3.5 Lightning vs Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Reasoning)
Which is better for the money: Nemotron 3.5 Lightning by NVIDIA or Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Reasoning) by NVIDIA? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.
Clear winner
Verdict
Pick Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Reasoning) vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 0.8% less intelligence, 1231.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 95.5% slower end-to-end.
| Metric | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Reasoning) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 12.9 | 12.8 | −0.8% Nemotron 3 Super 120B… is 0.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $99.03 | $1,318.62 | +1231.5% Nemotron 3 Super 120B… is 13× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 8.76s | 17.13s | +95.5% Nemotron 3 Super 120B… is 95.5% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.06 / $0.20 | $0.30 / $0.90 | |
| Input modalities | Text | Text |
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Haiku 5.5 (High) scores 37.80 for $94.1.
- Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
Nemotron 3.5 LightningNemotron 3 Super 120B A12B (Reasoning)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning/nvidia-nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/nemotron-3-5-lightning/nvidia-nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill