Raspberry Pi 3B+ Launches With Faster CPU, Dual-Band 802.11ac, Faster Ethernet

[coder]

We were talking about I/O. The RPi is plenty fast when it comes to I/O.

Okay, now you're just trolling.

I think you don't understand.

I think you don't understand.

Quoting Wikipedia: "HDMI permits sRGB 4:4:4 chroma subsampling (8–16 bits per component),
...
DVI however only mandates that monitors accept RGB. This is why your claim that you can always drive DVI monitors from HDMI ports is false.

Quoting Wikipedia: "To ensure baseline compatibility between different HDMI sources and displays (as well as backward compatibility with the electrically compatible DVI standard) all HDMI devices must implement the sRGB color space at 8 bits per component."

This is why your claim that you can't always drive DVI monitors from HDMI ports is false.

[caligula]

We were talking about I/O. The RPi is plenty fast when it comes to I/O.

Besides I/O, it is still sufficiently fast for learning programming. Raspbian comes with Geany preinstalled.

It really depends. I've done JS, Lua, Python, C, C++, Java and ASM programming on RPi. Some tools, combined with the SD card performance, are just too slow. Package managers perform slowly. But it's highly subjective when it's too slow to use. I can easily run out of RAM and can't even think of using modern IDEs. You can do some sort of learning but not with real tools like IntelliJ IDEA. Flashing OS images to SD is also slow. Booting is slow. Everything is slow compared to my Core i7 MBP. I don't enjoy using RPi for development. Prefer cross-compiling and shipping container images.

[caligula]

To do what? What was your original point?

You don't need to look that far to see what I was arguing: "IMHO running Scratch on RPi is a serious misuse of the hardware. ANY old computer could do that while ARMs typically don't excel at running desktop apps.".

Scratch is mostly 2d graphics. you only update small regions on the screen, not necessarily the whole scene. I was claiming that the things RPi made possible were already possible since like 1995. Remember The Incredible Machine 3? That's the level of graphics and programming I'm referring to.

Naturally, OpenGL ES with triple buffering, 24 bit colors and 50 Hz full-hd resolution looks butter smooth compared to immediate mode graphics directly to the framebuffer without buffering or with just a double buffer. But still, SDL has been successfully used as a portable graphics toolkit on VESA compatible PC boxes for years, since the beginning of times. Another common way of programming RPi is Python. You see, RPi model A/B were damn slow at compiling anything, especially linking with graphical system libraries, so people used scripting. That's also possible with mediocre 20 yo PC class hardware.

ISA and PCI were actual buses. So, the first point is that you're adding up the total pie, including overhead, that's shared by all devices. Your CPU is reading/writing your HDD over that same bus.

You're referring to some prehistoric designs. I don't even remember the last time IDE devices shared the bus with ISA cards. Maybe in 1993-1994? 1995 Pentiums already had a separate HDD bus. RPi3B+ doesn't. I originally mentioned 1995 class hardware. I don't really see point in comparing RPi to prehistoric junk.

Second point is that you never got 1 Gbps over that trash. Go ahead and try it. It'll never happen. Nobody ever got even 100 MBps over 33 MHz 32-bit PCI, which is the only flavor that was ever really mainstream.

But whether you get a full gigabit or only 600 Mbps isn't really the point.

Of course I know what the point was since I made the original claim "The machines can handle 100-1000 Mbps networks using ISA/PCI buses.". I'm not really interested if you get 99% effective throughput or not. The machines had 10/100/1000M network interfaces and could negotiate such link speeds. I actually tested the systems I have: 3Com 509b 10M ISA card, Super Socket 7 mobo, FTP download over cat5e IPv4 LAN => 7 Mbps max, $5 Realtek 8169 PCI & Sandy Bridge mobo with one PCI slot => 899 Mbps down in iperf. Good enough for me. Now, this is 1995-2005 tier network hardware. RPi3B+ came 2018. IMHO pretty decent perf (70-90% of negotiated speed). RPi3B+ can only provide 30%.

If you think these old PCs are so great, why aren't you using one? Go ahead and try it.

I have several old systems lying around. Why I don't use them? I get paid using more modern frameworks and systems. Trivial things like browsers just won't run smoothly on older hardware. I mostly use them for playing older games. Still can't see why I couldn't do more if I had not upgraded the systems. It seems the main reason people switch to RPis and new PCs is the lack of software support due to decreasing popularity. There's nothing inherently wrong with the hardware. Performance and memory wise, I have a Slot A Athlon system with specs pretty close to RPi 3. Not sure about CPU perf, but doesn't seem much slower.

[chithanh]

Okay, now you're just trolling.

I think you are just being intentionally obtuse here.

Let me spell it out for you again: The I/O in the Raspberry Pi is plenty fast for its intended use cases. Namely, all those which the RPi foundation has shown active interest in supporting.

This is why your claim that you can't always drive DVI monitors from HDMI ports is false.

I have an Orange Pi PC here, and with the Allwinner kernel it is not able to output RGB. The hardware is capable though, just the software sometimes isn't (and is permitted to output YUV per the standard).

[caligula]

Let me spell it out for you again: The I/O in the Raspberry Pi is plenty fast for its intended use cases. Namely, all those which the RPi foundation has shown active interest in supporting.

But that differs hugely from what people use RPi for. I know few dozens of people using RPis. I've got the impression that these are the most common use cases:
1) 1080p H.264 HTPC (most common by far, maybe 3/4 of the users)
2) Abandonware or nintendo game emulator (cheaper than the legal versions)
3) Bluetooth / airplay speaker (requires a DAC)
4) NAS (requires SATA USB bridges)
5) (web) server
6) wifi/ethernet router (second ethernet via dongles)
7) education (learning how to flash leds on/off, read gpio buttons and dallas temp sensors from Python code)
8) SDR receivers etc., very exotic solutions you can read from hackaday.

[chithanh]

1) 1080p H.264 HTPC (most common by far, maybe 3/4 of the users)

Officially supported by the foundation, I/O is fast enough for bitrates common in 1080p video.

2) Abandonware or nintendo game emulator (cheaper than the legal versions)

Doesn't need faster I/O than what the RPi provides.

3) Bluetooth / airplay speaker (requires a DAC)

Doesn't need faster I/O either. Audio quality through the 3.5 mm jack is fine now that the new output driver uses sigma-delta noise shaping.

4) NAS (requires SATA USB bridges)
5) (web) server
6) wifi/ethernet router (second ethernet via dongles)

Not intended use cases. Second Ethernet port gives you no performance advantages over VLAN setup anyway.

7) education (learning how to flash leds on/off, read gpio buttons and dallas temp sensors from Python code)

Education is the primary goal of RPi.

8) SDR receivers etc., very exotic solutions you can read from hackaday.

RTL-SDR works fine, as should most other cheap SDRs like Adalm-Pluto or LimeSDR.

It is unclear currently whether nexmon SDR will work on the wifi chip in the RPi 3B+ but if it does, that would be fantastic.

[caligula]

Officially supported by the foundation, I/O is fast enough for bitrates common in 1080p video.

Yes it's probably good enough for most pirated content, but modern cameras and streaming services already switched to H.265. It used to be ok, but nowadays the features are not sufficient for everyone.

Doesn't need faster I/O than what the RPi provides.

Yet the cheap Allwinner based Nintendo clones cost less and come with game pads. RPi doesn't win this battle.

Doesn't need faster I/O either. Audio quality through the 3.5 mm jack is fine now that the new output driver uses sigma-delta noise shaping.

I don't know if anyone uses that. People usually want a high end DAC or digital output.

Not intended use cases. Second Ethernet port gives you no performance advantages over VLAN setup anyway.

You'll probably realize that if you only had the RPi, you won't start disassembling and soldering the cables to connect multiple devices. You want multiple physical ports. That's what the Realtek USB dongles do. They don't care about the performance.

RTL-SDR works fine, as should most other cheap SDRs like Adalm-Pluto or LimeSDR.

Any SBC with an USB works for SDR.

[chithanh]

Yes it's probably good enough for most pirated content, but modern cameras and streaming services already switched to H.265. It used to be ok, but nowadays the features are not sufficient for everyone.

H.265 1080p decode is possible on the RPi 3. Decoder now uses offloading to QPU to achieve this.

Yet the cheap Allwinner based Nintendo clones cost less and come with game pads. RPi doesn't win this battle.

What battle does the RPi need to win? It works fine and if you buy a $15 Orange Pi then you deserve what you get.

I don't know if anyone uses that. People usually want a high end DAC or digital output.

The audio output now approaches CD quality. This is fine for usual people.

You'll probably realize that if you only had the RPi, you won't start disassembling and soldering the cables to connect multiple devices. You want multiple physical ports. That's what the Realtek USB dongles do. They don't care about the performance.

What does that have to do with anything? If your switch supports VLAN tagging, then of course it would be stupid to connect multiple dongles to the Pi, instead you work with a single cable and route between the VLANs.

Any SBC with an USB works for SDR.

Any SBC including the RPi.