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

[t.s.]

no gpu, no wifi, no bluetooth, no poe

Pine64 yes, but plenty orangepi has that.

you have implanted memories

Hm.. maybe.

[chithanh]

Which Orange Pi has a non-useless GPU?
Also I think only Orange Pi Zero supports PoE (802.3af non-compliant). But this model has only 512 MB RAM and no Bluetooth.
Bluetooth is on Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 / Orange Pi Prime / Orange Pi 2G IoT, but those don't have PoE. And no model has 802.11ac.

The only device that offers compelling hardware advantage over RPi3B+ (at same or lower cost) is the Orange Pi Prime - if one doesn't need 802.11ac Wifi.
That said, the new Orange Pi RK3399 looks interesting (and cheaper than other RK3399 boards), but outside the price range that competes with RPi.

[fuzz]

I've been looking for something like the Pi Zero with ethernet and PoE. No GPU required.

[t.s.]

Which Orange Pi has a non-useless GPU?
Also I think only Orange Pi Zero supports PoE (802.3af non-compliant). But this model has only 512 MB RAM and no Bluetooth.
Bluetooth is on Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 / Orange Pi Prime / Orange Pi 2G IoT, but those don't have PoE. And no model has 802.11ac.

The only device that offers compelling hardware advantage over RPi3B+ (at same or lower cost) is the Orange Pi Prime - if one doesn't need 802.11ac Wifi.
That said, the new Orange Pi RK3399 looks interesting (and cheaper than other RK3399 boards), but outside the price range that competes with RPi.

1. It's back at the one using it. For my use case, no 3D acceleration is not a problem.
2. Yes, they have no PoE or not compliant PoE. But I'm not aware that RPI have PoE too (without hut or shield).
3. Opi Win and Win Plus too, have Bluetooth.
4. Yes they have: orangepi lite 2. But then, what the speed of RPI with the new ac wifi? With just 1x1 antenna? https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=NNwoqEybOqg
5. Well, yes, with the launch of RPI 3B+, the difference shrink alot board vs board. But when you have a specific case and cost/performance is what you after, orangepi win hands down. For everything else (support, community, easy of use, compatibility, etc.) RPI still the better choice.

[audir8]

Wandboards or an iMX6 UDOO, both previously mentioned do have the etnaviv opensource GPU drivers and SATA/HDMI/gigabit/wifi but they're 32-bit ARMs if that matters to your apps. For the money you're spending on a high end one, you might be better off with an Intel atom based SBC. Seems like if you want USB3, Rock64 (has Gigabit) from PINE64 or an Orange PI lite 2 (has wifi) are the cheapest options in the same budget as an RPi.

Frankly, Some of the Allwinner/Rockchip based boards seem like they're well supported enough to run the next version of AOSP android and the latest Linux kernels, which is great if the RPi isn't meeting your needs in the same price budget. With pychromecast or VLC's chromecast support, you should be able cast what you want, if that's all you need without using HDMI at all.

The reason I'm focusing on USB3 is because there are IR receivers, WiFi/BT adapters, fast/large storage, etc.. all available for affordable prices if you want to do embedded projects around the house. The iMX6 boards seem more appropriate for embedded/mobile IoT with basic GPU requirements. I bet 80+% of other NXP iMX6 SoCs go into cars afterall.

Edit: The iMX8 will be Cortex-A53 64-bit cores: https://www.wandboard.org/products/wandpi-8m/

[caligula]

Bluetooth is on Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 / Orange Pi Prime / Orange Pi 2G IoT, but those don't have PoE.

Any competing board can support POE with a "hat". They can be powered via GPIO pins like this new rpi3.

The only device that offers compelling hardware advantage over RPi3B+ (at same or lower cost) is the Orange Pi Prime -

You realize that almost any board has more I/O bandwidth than any RPI due to the fact that RPI shares bandwidth between all devices except the SD card and the camera? Almost all other boards have dedicated Ethernet and/or 2+ USB hosts.

[chithanh]

But when you have a specific case

What you write is true but irrelevant to the GP's point:

no gpu, no wifi, no bluetooth, no poe

Want PoE? Buy Orange Pi Zero.
Want Bluetooth? Buy Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 / Prime / 2G IoT / Win / Win Plus.
Want both? You are SOL.
Want usable GPU? You are SOL. (maybe less so after mesa-lima and sunxi-cedrus become mainline)

That the Orange Pi Lite 2 supports ac wifi I didn't realize, thanks for pointing that out.

But then, what the speed of RPI with the new ac wifi? With just 1x1 antenna?

Much more important is that finally it supports 5 GHz, which allows to escape the crowded 2.4 GHz ISM band.

Any competing board can support POE with a "hat". They can be powered via GPIO pins like this new rpi3.

Of course, and any piece of computing equipment (with sufficiently low power requirements) can be PoE enabled by plugging injector and splitter. But this is not what is asked if you want a PoE capable board. At most using a daughterboard like the RPi 3B+ PoE hat would be acceptable.

You realize that almost any board has more I/O bandwidth than any RPI due to the fact that RPI shares bandwidth between all devices except the SD card and the camera? Almost all other boards have dedicated Ethernet and/or 2+ USB hosts.

I/O bandwidth is a weak point of the RPi but I don't think it matters for the intended use case. It is still plenty fast for 1080p streaming or other light tasks. Sure you can find some microbenchmarks where the Pine64 performs better.

[caligula]

Of course, and any piece of computing equipment (with sufficiently low power requirements) can be PoE enabled by plugging injector and splitter. But this is not what is asked if you want a PoE capable board. At most using a daughterboard like the RPi 3B+ PoE hat would be acceptable.

Based on your msg history, I couldn't guess what you were arguing against. My guess was that you were dismissing non-rpi boards. In my book, neither non-standard PoE on OPi boards nor RPi3B+ PoE are sufficient when you want real compact on-board PoE. The new RPi board was merely playing catching up when others already had it.

I/O bandwidth is a weak point of the RPi but I don't think it matters for the intended use case. It is still plenty fast for 1080p streaming or other light tasks. Sure you can find some microbenchmarks where the Pine64 performs better.

Look pal, I have several RPi boards, all three generations. I can't tell what's the intended use case. I really can't. Raspberries are used in millions of different appliances.

I used to use the original RPi as a HTPC, but I have a cute chinese Android HTPC box now and ain't ever gonna switch back to the crappy single ARMv6 core. I used to have RPi 2 as a NAS. Then I replaced it with a Banana Pro. Native SATA and Ethernet are just SOOO much better. I have another backup server powered by OPi Plus 2e. I have a BT speaker powered by some older dev board. RPi is the best when you need graphics or set up a mipi camera stream, but in most other cases the other boards are just more energy efficient, have more RAM, have onboard MMC, native 1G Ethernet. Backup NAS via USB bridge is bearable but not cool. Sharing the bus with ethernet is just sh*t. I tried to power the BT/network audio speaker with RPi but got latency issues when USB DAC and ethernet share the same USB bus. If only RPi had a decent DAC on board. Intel based NUCs and UDOO/UP boards are more powerful and have mesa compatible graphics (both OpenGL and OpenGL ES). Nowadays I'd probably pick an x86 based dev board for more serious computing as the toolchains are more compatible and there's more power.

[chithanh]

My argument was that while Orange Pi has its place, it cannot replace Raspberry Pi in general. There is over a dozen Orange Pi models with all individual advantages and disadvantages (disadvantage shared by almost all is the Mali GPU, except Orange Pi 2G IoT)

The original intended use case for Raspberry Pi is providing a low-cost computer for learning programming. Besides education, the RPi foundation additionally seems to cater to HTPC users, and the maker community. Other use cases appear to be marginal at least to the foundation.

[coder]

The original intended use case for Raspberry Pi is providing a low-cost computer for learning programming.

And that's not hampered by slow I/O? You'd have to go back to the days of DOS, to find PCs with such slow I/O performance!

Of course, that's when I learned programming, but I wasn't trying to do it on a modern 64-bit OS with corresponding bloat in the size of ... everything.