Compare / Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B vs DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B
Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B vs DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B
Updated November 2026
Verdict
Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 73.3 vs 50.1. On the 1 benchmark both labs report, Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B wins 1 and DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B wins 0. Both need about 47.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization. Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself.
Pick Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B if…
- you want the strongest model overall
- you work with long documents
- you need image input
Pick DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B if…
- you need a permissive license (MIT)
- you want the more widely used model (more quantized builds and community support)
Specifications
| Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B | DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B | |
|---|---|---|
| Small LM Index | 73.3 (likely 72–75) | 50.1 (likely 45–55) |
| Lab | NVIDIA · United States | DeepSeek · China |
| Released | 2026-10-12 | 2025-01-20 |
| Parameters | 74B (9B active, MoE) | 70.6B (dense) |
| Memory at 4-bit | ~46.9 GB | ~47.4 GB |
| Context window | 262K tokens | 128K tokens |
| Input | text, image | text |
| Reasoning | Hybrid (thinking on/off) | Always thinks |
| License | OpenMDW-1.1 | MIT |
| API price / 1M tokens | Self-host only | Self-host only |
| Hugging Face downloads (30 days) | 7.7K | 30.5K |
Benchmarks
Higher is better. Bold marks the winner where both labs report a score. ≈ marks the index model's estimate for a score that wasn't reported, ✓ an independent measurement and * a score measured by another lab.
| Benchmark | Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B | DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond Knowledge | 88.8 | 65.2 |
| Humanity's Last Exam Reasoning | 28.7 | ≈ 6 |
| AIME Math | ≈ 95 | 70.0 |
| LiveCodeBench Coding | ≈ 84 | 57.5 |
| Terminal-Bench Agentic | 53.9 | — |
| AA-LCR Long context | 67.4 | — |
Scores are mostly reported by each lab with its own settings, so small gaps are noise. See the methodology. Open in the interactive comparison to add more models.
Questions
Which is better, Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B or DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B?
Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B scores higher on the Small LM Index: 73.3 vs 50.1. On the 1 benchmark both labs report, Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B wins 1 and DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B wins 0.
Which is cheaper to run?
Neither model has a hosted API on OpenRouter, so you would run both yourself. Both need about 47.4 GB of memory at 4-bit quantization.
Which has the longer context window?
Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B has the longer context window: 262K tokens against 128K.
Can I use Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B and DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B commercially?
Nemotron 3.5 Bolt 74B-A9B is released under OpenMDW-1.1 and DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-70B under MIT. Apache 2.0 and MIT allow commercial use; other licenses can add conditions, so read the license before shipping a product.
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