13b models magically being better then 70b models is a myth. Most of the 7b or 13b model headlines are just clickbait, the models being good at benchmarks because they where trained on benchmark data.

Try Airo 70b 3.1.2, it is much, much better (for general purposes) then 99% of models out there. Yi based models are strong if you want the larger context.

This is difficult to evaluate. It could be that exl2 just breaks the translation layer.

Lzlv 70b is good, but I found Airo 70b 3.1.2 a little better at grasping context.