Mercury 3 vs Nemotron 3.5 Super VL
Mercury 3 took 7 min 31 s and $0.065 at list price, Nemotron 3.5 Super VL took 6 min 39 s and $0.035 at list price. Mercury 3 took 1.1× as long and cost 1.9× as much.
Mercury 3
Inception · $0.35/M out · 258 HN pts
Nemotron 3.5 Super VL
NVIDIA · $0.50/M out · free route · 11 HN pts
Pelican
Generate an SVG of a pelican riding a bicycle
Watch
Draw a mechanical wristwatch that shows the current local time, with a sweeping seconds hand and a date window. Make it look expensive.
Landing
Build the landing page for Lumen Cycles, a Copenhagen workshop that builds custom cargo bikes to order. Make it look like a real brand you would trust with 4,000 euros.
Breakout
Make a Breakout game I can play right now with the keyboard or the mouse. Give it several levels, a score and some juice.
Logo
Design a logo for Night Heron, an independent bookshop that only opens after dark.
About
Write the opening of the About us page for Patchbay, a three-person studio in Rotterdam that repairs vintage synthesizers. About 150 words.
Patchbay is a three-person repair studio in Rotterdam, tucked between a bike shop and a coffee roastery, where vintage synthesizers come to live another life. We are not a factory and we are not a museum; we are technicians who love the smell of warm solder and the patience that old circuits demand. Between us we have restored everything from early Moog modulars to battered Junos, and we treat each instrument as if it were the first one we ever opened. There is no assembly line here. Every capacitor is tested, every busbar tracked by hand, and every voice board is listened to twice—once on the bench, once through the speakers of the synth that will use it. Patchbay exists because these machines deserve more than a quick fix. They deserve someone who knows their quirks, their failures, and the strange, beautiful sounds that made us fall in love with them in the first place.
Patchbay is a three-person studio in Rotterdam dedicated to bringing vintage synthesizers back to life. We started with a shared obsession for the circuits, keyboards, and sonic quirks of the instruments that shaped electronic music, and we turned that obsession into a careful, hands-on repair practice. Every synth that comes through our door is treated as its own project—diagnosed by ear, opened with care, and restored using a mix of original components and thoughtful modern solutions where needed. We work with collectors, studios, and musicians who value the character of older gear and want it to keep sounding its best. Based in Rotterdam, we combine technical precision with a deep respect for the history inside every chassis. At Patchbay, repairing isn’t just about getting a machine working again; it’s about preserving the voice of an instrument and keeping it ready for the next recording, performance, or moment of inspiration.
Specs and numbers
| Mercury 3 | Nemotron 3.5 Super VL | |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Inception | NVIDIA |
| Made in | US | US |
| Released | 16 Oct 2026 | 15 Oct 2026 |
| Price in, per M tokens | $0.10 | free route (list $0.15/M) |
| Price out, per M tokens | $0.35 | free route (list $0.50/M) |
| Context | 1,000,000 tokens | 1,048,576 tokens |
| Weights | closed | open |
| Hacker News points | 258 | 11 |
| Time for the six prompts | 7 min 31 s | 6 min 39 s |
| List price of the six prompts | $0.065 | $0.035 |
Nemotron 3.5 Super VL was cheaper: $0.030 less at list price, and less on 3 of the 6 prompts. Nemotron 3.5 Super VL was faster: 52 s less in total, and faster on 2 of the 6 prompts.
In the recording, Mercury 3's Breakout game stopped painting; Nemotron 3.5 Super VL's plays.





