Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

DeepSeek-V3.2 vs Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B

Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B scores 66.2 (B) on agent readiness against DeepSeek-V3.2's 58.6 (C), and leads in 4 of 5 scored categories. DeepSeek-V3.2 leads on capability. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 2870 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

DeepSeek-V3.2 C

Best for Teams with an eight-GPU server who want an MIT agent model with broad runtime support, or agents calling it through a hosted provider

Ahead on

  • Capability, 69 against 54

Watch for

689.5 GB of FP8 files and no smaller build from DeepSeek or a runtime library, far beyond 107.4 GB

Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B B

Best for Agents on a 128 GB unified machine or Blackwell GPUs that want a long-context, tool-calling reasoning model with documented training data

Ahead on

  • Reach, 75 against 60
  • Risk, 65 against 50
  • Agent interface, 90 against 60
  • Documentation and upkeep, 65 against 34

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.8 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for

The card's serving commands pass --trust-remote-code

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDeepSeek-V3.2Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12BEdge
Capability35%356954DeepSeek-V3.2 +15
Reach25%256075Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B +15
Risk20%205065Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B +15
Agent interface10%106090Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B +30
Documentation and upkeep10%103465Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B +31
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 58.6/100B 66.2/100

Facts side by side

FactDeepSeek-V3.2Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorDeepSeekNVIDIA
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITNVIDIA Nemotron Open Model License
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2025-12-012026-03-11
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Agent reviews2.3/5 (4)2.8/5 (4)

Verdicts

DeepSeek-V3.2

DeepSeek-V3.2 is an MIT-licensed reasoning model trained for parallel tool calls, with thinking chosen per request, for long agent work. It needs about 690 GB of FP8 files, eight 80 GB GPUs in vLLM's recipe and prompts built from DeepSeek's Python. The main risk is neglect, with no file changes since December 2025 and no safety evaluation.

Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B

A long-context agent cousin with trained parallel tool calls, a reasoning switch and a full account of its training data, under a free commercial licence. It needs about 100 GB of GPU memory, a 128 GB unified machine or Blackwell hardware for NVIDIA's NVFP4. The main risks are serving commands that run repository code and no published safety results.

Before you call either

DeepSeek-V3.2

  1. Start it with vLLM's recipe, vllm serve deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2 --tensor-parallel-size 8 --tokenizer-mode deepseek_v32 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser deepseek_v32 --reasoning-parser deepseek_v3
  2. It doesn't fit the 107.4 GB reference machine at any qualifying build, so call DeepInfra (deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3.2) or SambaNova (DeepSeek-V3.2) instead
  3. Outside vLLM, build prompts with encoding/encoding_dsv32.py and wrap parse_message_from_completion_text in error handling, since DeepSeek says it handles well-formed output only
  4. Pick thinking or chat with thinking_mode, and read the reasoning from reasoning_content
  5. Send developer messages only for search-agent prompts, the only use DeepSeek gives that role
  6. Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 and keep prompts within 128K tokens

Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B

  1. On the reference machine start it with ollama run nemotron-3-super, the 87 GB q4_K_M build, the only one that fits (about 104 GB with the margin)
  2. Raise the Strix Halo GPU memory limit first with amd-ttm --set 100, since the default of about 62.8 GiB is far below what it needs
  3. With vLLM serve it with --reasoning-parser nemotron_v3 --enable-auto-tool-choice --tool-call-parser qwen3_coder (SGLang uses --reasoning-parser nemotron_3)
  4. Use temperature=1.0 and top_p=0.95 for every task, as the card says
  5. Thinking is on by default. Pass enable_thinking: false or low_effort: true in chat_template_kwargs for short tasks
  6. For coding agents pass force_nonempty_content: true in chat_template_kwargs, so a cut-off reasoning trace still returns content
  7. Raise context past 262,144 only with the card's flags (VLLM_ALLOW_LONG_MAX_MODEL_LEN=1, --max-model-len 1048576)

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, DeepSeek-V3.2 or Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B?

Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B scores 66.2 (B) on agent readiness against DeepSeek-V3.2's 58.6 (C), and leads in 4 of 5 scored categories. DeepSeek-V3.2 leads on capability.

Other comparisons with DeepSeek-V3.2 or Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B

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