Quantifying the Capability Boundary of DeepSeek Models: An Application-Driven Performance Analysis

DeepSeek-R1, known for its low training cost and exceptional reasoning capabilities, has achieved state-of-the-art performance on various benchmarks. However, detailed evaluations for DeepSeek Series models from the perspective of real-world applications are lacking, making it challenging for users to select the most suitable DeepSeek models for their specific needs. To address this gap, we conduct a systematic evaluation of the DeepSeek-V3, DeepSeek-R1, DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Qwen series, DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama series, their corresponding 4-bit quantized models, and the reasoning model QwQ-32B using the enhanced A-Eval benchmark, A-Eval-2.0. Through a comparative analysis of original instruction-tuned models and their distilled counterparts, we investigate how reasoning enhancements impact performance across diverse practical tasks. To assist users in model selection, we quantify the capability boundary of DeepSeek models through performance tier classifications. Based on the quantification results, we develop a model selection handbook that clearly illustrates the relation among models, their capabilities and practical applications. This handbook enables users to select the most cost-effective models without efforts, ensuring optimal performance and resource efficiency in real-world applications. It should be noted that, despite our efforts to establish a comprehensive, objective, and authoritative evaluation benchmark, the selection of test samples, characteristics of data distribution, and the setting of evaluation criteria may inevitably introduce certain biases into the evaluation results. We will continuously optimize the evaluation benchmarks and periodically update this paper to provide more comprehensive and accurate evaluation results. Please refer to the latest version of the paper for the most current results and conclusions.