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Rock64, 4gb RAM and usb 3.0
Pine64 is certainly proving to be a tough competitor, though, and its latest board beats the Raspberry Pi both in terms of price and performance.
The latest Pine64 single-board computer is called the Rock64 and is set for release on July 31. At its heart is a 1.5GHz Rockchip RK3328 64-bit quad-core A53 processor complete with Mali-450 MP2 GPU. It ships in three configurations offering 1GB ($25), 2GB ($35), and 4GB ($45) of 1600MHz LPDDR3 RAM.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/354810/rock64-board-beats-raspberry-pi-on-price-and-performance
Sounds interesting to me as a cheap home server because of the usb3.0 and 1Gbit.
Comments
home "server"
It looks good on paper, but the company who makes it has gotten bad rep from their previous board, which took forever to be delivered. And then when you got the Pine64, there were lots of issues, from bad build quality, to network packet loss and generally unstable OSes. This has resulted in very little adoption and support for the board.
I'll be interested to see if people are willing to give this another go just because the specs look nice for the price (which was the case with the previous board too).
Every notice that virtually every "Pi Killer" ends up with crappy driver support and after a couple minor updates, you're left with something that just doesn't seem to quite work in Linux, and nobody wants to try to fix the binary blobs and half-assed code that looks like it was written using a Pascal2C2Linux translation tool?
That's why Pi will never be killed.
The Pine64 was the worst purchase I've ever made/backed... I can't even give the thing away now.
I like to hear you story.
Had a pine64 a an well, though it would be great..
But no, sorry.... The first board uhm... Sucks.
Maybe this one will be better? But I'm not going to be the one to test it out this time.
Support / OS's where buggy, no real / good fixes. It took "ages".. So I bailed.
Binary blob for a graphics driver that won't ever be mainlined into the kernel. User created and supported images as Pine won't create their own images. User forum run by amateurs that like to censor anyone that doesn't spout the company line. (One in particular that wears a massive beard is poisonous in his devotion to everything Pine and won't let you sully the name.) Power issues since they use the microUSB connector instead of a proper barrel connector. Ethernet interface that breaks often and doesn't like to talk to switches. Crappy support that is only from other users and no word from the company. Shipping that takes ages to get anywhere. I could list others...
Pretty much MediaTek lite.
I guess the Android releases work okay if you want to use it in STB mode, but for anything else it's just not worth the headache.
These are basically almost reference boards with half-assed builds that are made as shovelware. There's no real intention for these devices to be mainstreamed, much like all of the similar builds of NAS/Router/etc ARM/MIPS devices. If it has a binary blob, time to move on if you expect it to actually be useful for more than the few builds that are likely tied to a specific kernel major at BEST.
Wtf??
Precisely.
Ahhh.. Um... Ok..?? Sure. Right. Gotcha.
Agreed, what a total piece of garbage! 1Mbps download speeds on a 1Gbps port, good job Pine!
http://jmd.cc/devices/
This thread.
It's no fartmother's sister's motherless goat, but what is?
Baaaaahhh...
So much clearer now. Thank you good sir!
If you want a good ARM device for network storage I would recommend a Banana Pi or an Orange Pi. Both offer SATA II interfaces and 1Gbps ports. The Banana Pi Pro is only a dual core CPU with relatively low performance, but it would still work fine for network storage. The Orange Pi Plus on the other hand has better performance than the RPi2 (not the RPi3 though) but the power usage is on the higher side for an ARM device.
Don't bleat too loud, or @bsdguy will catch us!
I'm a fan of the Odriod lines of SBC's or the NanoPi.
And as for my username:
ODroid is my go-to for ARM devices. Aside from the limited OS options (Ubuntu and Android), they are amazing little devices that outperform the Raspberry Pi in every category (single-threaded performance, multi-threaded performance, NIC speed, IO speed, and power usage). The only things the RPi3 does better is display compatibility (the ODroid usually needs a text file edit to switch between a TV and monitor), wireless controller compatibility, and OS options.
I like the atmega328p(owerglove)- its badass.
And the TinkerBoard is actually a really solid device, just got one in last week and the OS is still kind of rough, but it's handled everything very nicely.
@ewrek
hi, I have two Pine64+; one Sopine; one Pinebook; half a dozen Padi Stamps; an LCD Pine Droid tablet; an Android 7.0 playdesk, and a Pine64+ desktop which I have been using for my primary desk since last November. ( love em all )
Most recently I have obtained the Rock64 ( RK3328 ) mentioned in your post; my favorite Pine Inc product by far; I am also an avid Raspberry PI enthusiast, but I must say that the Rock64 spins circles around the RPi3; hands down, it makes the RPi3 look like the childs toy PI was designed to be.
With 4G of LPDDR3 ram, 16GB of eMMC cold bootable storage, usb3.0, PI-2 and PI P5+ bus, external Gbe PHY, internal 10|100 PHY , two usb2.0 ports-- this little board Rocks!
My PI-calc bench mark 1010 places comes in at 220ms; the 5010 digit run comes in at 2.43 seconds ; and because it does not have the RPi3 bottle-neck hub, it screams as a NAS server too.
It boots from eMMC, SPI flash, or SD card ! Currently I'm running ubuntu xenial from the eMMC module at full 64bit arm64 ArmV8! Unlike the Raspberry PI which is pitifully locked in at 1GB slow ram, bottle-neck hub, and 32bit armhf...
This Rock64 board may not be a PI killer, but its definitely going to be a game changer!
Cheers
And how much did you pay for those, or did you get your boards for free from Pine, full disclosure of course.
How exactly will it be a game changer if it can't beat a Raspberry Pi? The Raspberry Pi is basically the bottom of the barrel for ARM devices in terms of features and performance, if the Rock64 can't compete with a Raspberry Pi then it's not worth them releasing it because the Raspberry Pi is pretty bad compared to all of the much better ARM devices you can get for the same price.
Has Pine64 fixed the 1Gbps port or am I still stuck with 1Mbps? I won't be trying anything from Pine64 until I can get my Pine A64+ working the way it was supposed to over a year ago.
@KuJoe
The Gbe issue has been fixed for six months; screams at over 950MB/s So, if you want your Pine64+ to have Gbe, download the latest image and scream!
The Rock64 board is 'already' beating the RPi in every category; first batch is already sold out and the prototypes are killers! All of my PI's are being decommissioned and replaced with the Rock64! Oh, btw, RockChip is "open"; unlike Allwinner, which is closed. So, the OS(s) for Rock64 are going to be closer faster; as an example, mainline already runs as a server; much of the mainline work is being done by RockChip; the matrix is filling fast, and the full mainline will be available soon; so not only 64bit, but mainline too.
I'm soooo pumped about this board dude!
Your conflicting statements and my experience with Pine64 lead me to not want to buy anything from them now.
Well, considering he's one of the Pine 64 Forum moderators, you'd kind of expect him to pump their products.
Which is why I was surprised when he made the statement that it "wouldn't be a Pi killer but it would be a game changer". I was expecting an honest answer but then he replied with something that contradicted his prior post which basically killed my interest in the Rock64.