Raspberry Pi 6 or 7 ?
Discussion
From their range topping RP5 to the lowest RP0, Raspberry have a very
full range of small computers.
Most of them seem to have very little compute speed, but that's a function
of the ARM CPU and its mobile heritage.
I tried out a RP3B+ and it runs at about 5% of the speed of my main AMD
PC, so my impression of it is that it's fine as a child's toy, but you
can't get much done with it. Waiting 20 times as long as the AMD isn't
really an option.
I also bought a RP5 and that runs at about 20% of the speed of the AMD,
so four times better IMHO than the RP3B+. I find the RP5 has enough
compute speed to be useful at actually getting things done. A five times
wait isn't so bad.
Bonus points that it runs on 27W power supply. A lot of compute speed
for the Watt. It makes the 500W power supply in the AMD look somewhat
wasteful.
It looks to me like there's a significant gap in the market for a RP
with 8 cores or 16 cores and a comparable amount of RAM (8G, 16 G, 32G
perhaps). I think this would compete well with lower end PCs and give
AMD and Intel some competition.
I'll be having a close look at any upcoming RP6 or RP7.
Also, spending anything more than about £500 on any replacement for
the AMD looks like a waste of money. I can do quite a bit with the much
cheaper RP5.
full range of small computers.
Most of them seem to have very little compute speed, but that's a function
of the ARM CPU and its mobile heritage.
I tried out a RP3B+ and it runs at about 5% of the speed of my main AMD
PC, so my impression of it is that it's fine as a child's toy, but you
can't get much done with it. Waiting 20 times as long as the AMD isn't
really an option.
I also bought a RP5 and that runs at about 20% of the speed of the AMD,
so four times better IMHO than the RP3B+. I find the RP5 has enough
compute speed to be useful at actually getting things done. A five times
wait isn't so bad.
Bonus points that it runs on 27W power supply. A lot of compute speed
for the Watt. It makes the 500W power supply in the AMD look somewhat
wasteful.
It looks to me like there's a significant gap in the market for a RP
with 8 cores or 16 cores and a comparable amount of RAM (8G, 16 G, 32G
perhaps). I think this would compete well with lower end PCs and give
AMD and Intel some competition.
I'll be having a close look at any upcoming RP6 or RP7.
Also, spending anything more than about £500 on any replacement for
the AMD looks like a waste of money. I can do quite a bit with the much
cheaper RP5.
I'm not sure that you're comparing apples with oranges there really, you seem to have a pretty powerful desktop PC, and of course an Pi isn't going to get close to it.
The Pi5 hasn't been out for that long, so there won't be a Pi6 very soon. And actually I think they are already running into price/performance issues compared to things like Intel's N series chips, where you can get a Mini PC with Windows 11 for more or less £100.
My ‘server’ is an i7 4770k with 2 sata ssd, a big noctua cooler and 4x4gb ram on a 500w passive seasonic and my fancy Eve plug reads about 25-35w idle and general servering (Syncthing, jellyfin, nextpvr)
I’m not sure why you’d want a rasp pi to get up to that level of power really.
I’m increasingly tempted to get a few of these things onto pi because win10 pro ‘downs’ itself every 30 days for updates and then won’t restart itself due to bitlocker, doh.
Given all the very small PCs also available with windows on them I’m not sure why you’d want a powerful pi.
All I want is a lightweight windows that won’t turn itself off!
I’m not sure why you’d want a rasp pi to get up to that level of power really.
I’m increasingly tempted to get a few of these things onto pi because win10 pro ‘downs’ itself every 30 days for updates and then won’t restart itself due to bitlocker, doh.
Given all the very small PCs also available with windows on them I’m not sure why you’d want a powerful pi.
All I want is a lightweight windows that won’t turn itself off!
A pi5 is fast enough for a GUI, but if you want to play games (tuxracer or doom excluded lol), or render stuff in blender or edit 4k video, it's not going be a good choice compared to a big pc.
If you want to run background stuff like pihole, or a web application, mysql, some sort of monitoring like zabbix, homeassistant, etc, then even a pi3 or pi zero at a push will do, and consume 5w or less.
If you want to run background stuff like pihole, or a web application, mysql, some sort of monitoring like zabbix, homeassistant, etc, then even a pi3 or pi zero at a push will do, and consume 5w or less.
Windows uses a lot of processing power to not much useful sometimes, it's very busy tracking you, pushing adverts in your face and stealing your data.
Back last century, we used to get plenty of useful work done on a 386.
Although we had Suns and HP Unix boxes for 'proper computer work' like serious circuit simulation.
You can actually get a lot done with a Pi4.
I'm using one now.
There really isn't fundamentally a huge amount of number crunching in what 90% of people do 90% of the time.
Since 'upgrading' my desktop windoze PC to a new (but fairly modest) Win11 machine, I'm tempted to upgrade my Pi for a Pi 5.
But it's over a hundred quid with a case, PSU etc.
For an upgrade I don't really need.
It's a chunk of cash for something with very fragile vulnerable connectors which make it worthless if they get damaged.
I'm more interested in things that can be done with a Pi zero TBH, I dabble with using one for music, which offloads a certain amount of luggage from my PC.
There are a lot of alternatives, chromebooks, NUC-style things, tablets, ....
A lot of people's 'needs' overlap with what they use their phone or a games console for, there's no single best answer.
Back last century, we used to get plenty of useful work done on a 386.
Although we had Suns and HP Unix boxes for 'proper computer work' like serious circuit simulation.
You can actually get a lot done with a Pi4.
I'm using one now.
There really isn't fundamentally a huge amount of number crunching in what 90% of people do 90% of the time.
Since 'upgrading' my desktop windoze PC to a new (but fairly modest) Win11 machine, I'm tempted to upgrade my Pi for a Pi 5.
But it's over a hundred quid with a case, PSU etc.
For an upgrade I don't really need.
It's a chunk of cash for something with very fragile vulnerable connectors which make it worthless if they get damaged.
I'm more interested in things that can be done with a Pi zero TBH, I dabble with using one for music, which offloads a certain amount of luggage from my PC.
There are a lot of alternatives, chromebooks, NUC-style things, tablets, ....
A lot of people's 'needs' overlap with what they use their phone or a games console for, there's no single best answer.
I think the OP has missed what a Pi is actually for, it's not supposed a desktop PC, they are different things to different people IMO they are in the main there to server the maker/tinkerer type community who need GPIO pins and such.
I have several from 3B's to 4's and they all work for their intended purposes very well. Some examples of my use cases:
Pihole
Running one of my 3D printers
Astroberry - A distro for my Astrophotography rig
Allskycam - GPIO pins run an environment sensor, a relay for a dew heater and a relay for a fan.
Falcon player for running my Christmas lightshow
Homeassistant - Though I haven't done anything with this one since I installed it, will get there at some point
The Pi5 hasn't actually been very popular when compared with the previous iterations for many reasons, cost is one, active over passive cooling for another and power requirements when compared to the previous gen etc.
As a point around the compute side of things, like when asked how many miles a year people drive they vastly overestimate this, same goes for the amount of compute they actually need and in the scenarios a Pi isn't up to the job there are plenty of other options that get the job done that are still low power and less than the "AMD" in the OP.
I have several from 3B's to 4's and they all work for their intended purposes very well. Some examples of my use cases:
Pihole
Running one of my 3D printers
Astroberry - A distro for my Astrophotography rig
Allskycam - GPIO pins run an environment sensor, a relay for a dew heater and a relay for a fan.
Falcon player for running my Christmas lightshow
Homeassistant - Though I haven't done anything with this one since I installed it, will get there at some point
The Pi5 hasn't actually been very popular when compared with the previous iterations for many reasons, cost is one, active over passive cooling for another and power requirements when compared to the previous gen etc.
As a point around the compute side of things, like when asked how many miles a year people drive they vastly overestimate this, same goes for the amount of compute they actually need and in the scenarios a Pi isn't up to the job there are plenty of other options that get the job done that are still low power and less than the "AMD" in the OP.
I just like the Pi 4, because my old PC was quite power hungry, whereas the Pi just stays permanently powered up, without costing much.
I could use a tablet for most of it, but I prefer a mouse and keyboard.
Can the Pi5 not live with passive cooling?
The silence is another plus point IMHO.
I could use a tablet for most of it, but I prefer a mouse and keyboard.
Can the Pi5 not live with passive cooling?
The silence is another plus point IMHO.
OutInTheShed said:
Can the Pi5 not live with passive cooling?
.
Certainly. I use something like https://thepihut.com/products/aluminium-armour-hea... and haven't had any problems with throttling in any kind of normal use..
xeny said:
OutInTheShed said:
Can the Pi5 not live with passive cooling?
.
Certainly. I use something like https://thepihut.com/products/aluminium-armour-hea... and haven't had any problems with throttling in any kind of normal use..
It would be nice to have a socket for an external aerial.
Lime I say compute module 5 with dev board and case etc external antenna
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/cm5-dev-kit/
Or the pine board one if you want pie+ too
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/cm5-dev-kit/
Or the pine board one if you want pie+ too
OutInTheShed said:
How does the Wifi perform with that?
It would be nice to have a socket for an external aerial.
I tried when I originally installed it, and only really remember I got something over 100 Mbit which I sort of think of as "enough" for this class of device) It's wired and headless at present so I'm not leaping to retest it. The antenna is on the board on the opposite side of the PCIe interface to the power button, and the case is reasonably cut back in that area.It would be nice to have a socket for an external aerial.
I think the WiFi setup is approved by the FCC as is, and I'm not sure how that works with an external antenna?
Trustmeimadoctor said:
Plenty of other SBC that are way faster than rpi5 rockchip stuff,
Got a list by any chance ?I will ignore any Intel based machines (no point making
a near monopoly even worse) and I will avoid M$ anything
(gave up on M$ > 25 years ago and have never regretted it).
Some people might be interested.
Trustmeimadoctor said:
risc v stuff is getting interesting too even the n100 based stuff is nowhere as efficient as things like a pi when idle usually about triple the consumption
I think it's quite funny so many people mention power consumption at idle.
Does this imply they aren't doing much with their machines ?
;->
dcb said:
I think it's quite funny so many people mention power consumption
at idle.
Does this imply they aren't doing much with their machines ?
;->
Unless you're running an ongoing computational workload (in which case this class of hardware is a poor fit), in my experience CPUs spend most of their time idle. What are you doing to keep your CPUs busy?at idle.
Does this imply they aren't doing much with their machines ?
;->
Yes as most of the time a machine is idle on more than 1 core unless your running multiple vm's or containers/apps
A machine can actually still be doing stuff and be "idle" as there are many c states
For the best alternatives look for stuff based on the rk3588 chips stuff like the orange pi 5 and others
Have a look at explain computers com and jeffgeerling for stuff on sbc's
The issue with non raspberry pi's or intel/AMD CPU's is os support. Unless your wanting to compile your own kernel's you may be stuck using out of date versions of Linux from Chinese servers that may or may not get updates
A machine can actually still be doing stuff and be "idle" as there are many c states
For the best alternatives look for stuff based on the rk3588 chips stuff like the orange pi 5 and others
Have a look at explain computers com and jeffgeerling for stuff on sbc's
The issue with non raspberry pi's or intel/AMD CPU's is os support. Unless your wanting to compile your own kernel's you may be stuck using out of date versions of Linux from Chinese servers that may or may not get updates
I've started using a Pi5 as my primary machine. I got it to use as a thin client to access my remote desktop so I could work from home. The pi5 drives two 4k monitors perfectly adequately, whereas I found the Pi4 did not. I also have a laptop running Windows, specced also more as a thin client than anything else.
Can these machines do "real" work? Yes, of course. They're not powerful compared to modern desktops, but they are screamingly fast compared to the desktops we did real work on a few years ago ... and the real-world work has not changed.
If you're trying to do computationally intensive video processing on your desktop machine, then you'll want something with more clout, but how many people really do that? For serious data processing, I do wonder how many people really run that load on their desktop? I'd have thought most organisations have already virtualised their desktops and run their number crunching on something other than Windows.
If you're into gaming, then a powerful local machine makes perfect sense, of course. I just wonder how many home users really exploit more of the processing power they've bought than a device like a Pi5 delivers?
Can these machines do "real" work? Yes, of course. They're not powerful compared to modern desktops, but they are screamingly fast compared to the desktops we did real work on a few years ago ... and the real-world work has not changed.
If you're trying to do computationally intensive video processing on your desktop machine, then you'll want something with more clout, but how many people really do that? For serious data processing, I do wonder how many people really run that load on their desktop? I'd have thought most organisations have already virtualised their desktops and run their number crunching on something other than Windows.
If you're into gaming, then a powerful local machine makes perfect sense, of course. I just wonder how many home users really exploit more of the processing power they've bought than a device like a Pi5 delivers?
Trustmeimadoctor said:
You say intel monopoly/ms monopoly intel haven't had a CPU monopoly for years
30 seconds in Google brought up this page from Wikipedia:Wikipedia said:
Since the 2000s and especially since the late 2010s, Intel has faced increasing competition, which has led to a reduction in Intel's dominance and market share in the PC market. Nevertheless, with a 68.4% market share as of 2023, Intel still leads the x86 market by a wide margin.
Not the 80-85% I thought, but still a dominant player and so very worth buying non-Intel machines for a benefits of mixed computing environment.
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