Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B vs Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B scores higher on the intelligence index, 14 against 13. The cheapest machine here that runs Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507 is the Mac Studio M5 Ultra, 256GB, at $10,799. Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B runs on the Radeon AI PRO R9700, 32GB at $1,299, $9,500 less. The Radeon AI PRO R9700, 32GB is priced as the card alone, without the PC around it. On the Mac Studio M5 Ultra, 256GB, the cheapest machine here that runs both, Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B is about 7.6× quicker: 137 tok/s against 18, both estimated from memory bandwidth. At 500k tokens a day the Mac Studio M5 Ultra, 256GB pays for itself in 977 years running Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507, against 2,352 years running Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B.
| Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B | Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507 | |
|---|---|---|
| Intelligence index | 14 | 13 |
| Class | Below every hosted tier | Below every hosted tier |
| Weights | 25 GB | 142 GB |
| Needs at 32k | 26 GB | 148 GB |
| Quantisation | Q4_K_M | Q4_K_M |
| Parameters | 31.6B (3B active) | 235.1B (22B active) |
| Max context | 256k | 256k |
| API price per 1M | $0.025 in / $0.12 out | $0.0875 in / $0.35 out |
| Licence | OpenMDW 1.1 | Apache 2.0 |
| Machines here that run it | 27 of 37 | 1 of 37 |
| Cheapest machine that runs it | AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700, 32GB $1,299card only | Mac Studio M5 Ultra, 256GB $10,799 |
Run Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B on the Radeon AI PRO R9700, 32GB · or Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507 on the Mac Studio M5 Ultra, 256GB
Jump to: Side by side on the Mac Studio M5 Ultra, 256GB · How much use it takes to pay for the machine · Machines that run one and not the other · The assumptions behind both columns
Side by side on the Mac Studio M5 Ultra, 256GB
The table above gives each model the cheapest machine that runs it, and those are two different machines, so nothing in it is a like-for-like race. The Mac Studio M5 Ultra, 256GB is the cheapest machine here that runs both, so this is the pair doing the same work on the same hardware.
| Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B | Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507 | |
|---|---|---|
| Speed at 32k | 137 tok/s estimated | 18 tok/s estimated |
| Pay-back on this machine | Pays back in 2,352 years | Pays back in 977 years |
| API cost per month | $0.47 | $1.58 |
Run Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B on the Mac Studio M5 Ultra, 256GB · or Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507
How much use it takes to pay for the machine
Everything above is at 500k tokens a day. Pay-back moves with how much you actually run, so here are both models at the five levels of use the calculator names, on the Mac Studio M5 Ultra, 256GB. Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507 pays for it sooner at every level of use, so which of them to run does not turn on how hard you work it.
| A day's use | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B | Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507 |
|---|---|---|
| 50ka few chats a day | 23,524 years | 9,774 years |
| 200klight assistant use | 5,881 years | 2,444 years |
| 1Ma moderate coding-assistant day | 1,176 years | 489 years |
| 4Mheavy coding with an agent | 294 years | 122 years |
| 20Magents running most of the day | 59 years | 24 years |
Run Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B at 20M tokens a day · or Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507
Machines that run one and not the other
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B needs 26 GB of memory at 32k of context and Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507 needs 148 GB. That puts Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B on 26 of the 37 machines priced here that Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507 does not, starting at $1,299.
| Machine | Price | Memory | Speed on Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B | Pay-back |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD Radeon AI PRO R9700, 32GB | $1,299card only | 32 GB | 127 tok/s estimated | Pays back in 297 years |
| Strix Halo Corsair AI Workstation 300, 64GB | $1,700 | 64 GB | 54 tok/s estimated | Pays back in 394 years |
| Strix Halo Framework Desktop, 64GB | $1,959 | 64 GB | 54 tok/s estimated | Pays back in 454 years |
| NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090, 32GB | $1,999card only | 32 GB | 226 tok/s estimated | Pays back in 467 years |
| Strix Halo GMKtec EVO-X2, 64GB | $2,200 | 64 GB | 54 tok/s estimated | Pays back in 531 years |
| Mac mini M5 Pro, 48GB | $2,299 | 48 GB | 35 tok/s estimated | Pays back in 656 years |
20 more, on the Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B page.
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B is also head to head with Qwen3.5 9B above it on the leaderboard. One more model needs much the same memory: Granite 4.2 30B. Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507 is also head to head with MiniCPM5 2B below it on the leaderboard and Qwen3.8 Flash Next, the current Qwen nearest it in size. One more model needs much the same memory: MiniMax M2.7.
The assumptions behind both columns
Both columns use the same usage: 500k tokens a day at 15:1 input to output, 32k of context, $0.17 per kWh, and today's API prices held flat. Speeds marked estimated are worked out from memory bandwidth rather than measured, and pay-back scales with them. Where nobody rents an open model by the token, its API prices are the nearest hosted model's, named beside them. Machines are the 37 here with a published price that are still sold. Change any of it in the calculator.
More head to head: every machine that runs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning 30B-A3B · every machine that runs Qwen3 235B-A22B Instruct 2507 · every other match-up · both against the frontier · the quickest pay-back at each level of use