Microsoft's STEM-focused 14B vs Meta's lightweight 3B. Two different philosophies on small, efficient language models.
Quality
🏆 Phi-4Phi-4 at 14B dramatically outperforms Llama 3.2 3B on every benchmark. It even competes with much larger models.
Efficiency
🏆 Llama 3.2 3BLlama 3.2 3B needs only 3GB VRAM and runs on phones. Phi-4 needs 10GB+.
Math & STEM
🏆 Phi-4Phi-4 achieves 95.3% on GSM8K — better than models 5x its size. It was specifically trained on synthetic STEM data.
General Chat
🏆 Phi-4While larger, Phi-4's training on diverse synthetic data makes it a better conversationalist.
Edge Deployment
🏆 Llama 3.2 3BFor phones, tablets, and IoT devices, Llama 3.2 3B is the practical choice.
🎯 Which Should You Choose?
These models serve different niches. Phi-4 is the best small model for STEM, math, and reasoning — punching far above its weight class. Llama 3.2 3B is for edge deployment where every megabyte counts. If you have 16GB RAM, run Phi-4. If you're deploying to mobile, use Llama 3.2.