14 ms·

At $60 - its able to run anything x86, plus hardware transcoding and a cpu about 3x more powerful than a RPI 5, not sure why anyone would even want a raspberry

At $60 - its able to run anything x86, plus hardware transcoding and a cpu about 3x more powerful than a RPI 5, not sure why anyone would even want a raspberry pi. Not to mention the built in 2.5G nic with PoE and m.2 slot. Adding a PoE and m.2 hats on a raspberry pi would add another $25-40 to the price. Hope they ramp up production on these Radxa boards. Edit: another source with better image of the form factor. It might actually fit a raspberry case. https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/07/19/radxa-x4-low-cost-credit-card-sized-intel-n100-sbc-raspberry-pi-5-alternative/ https://www.cnx-software.com/2024/07/19/radxa-x4-low-cost-cr...

paulmd 2y ago
i've done the rant many times before [1] but frankly rpi has almost never made sense. there were always things like the ECS Liva/Liva X for $100-125 that were fully-featured, for roughly the same price as a rpi once you consider all the shit you'll need to get that $45 computer booted up. The Liva (and similar booksizes/net-tops, and similar things like AM1 platform from AMD) benefited hugely from using standard drivers and standard BIOS versus a massive amount of early ARM jank (the early RPi days a lot of things were actually soft-float, let alone niceties like UEFI!). the best argument for rpi has always been the combination of GPIO and linux. But that's a double-edged sword too, because linux isn't really very good at hard-realtime. And you can always just get a Bus Pirate or similar tool for doing just plain GPIO. And nowadays the ESP32 has basically completely displaced it for a lot of those sorts of "GPIO glue" roles. If you didn't need that, like if you just wanted a low-power fileserver or HTPC... the x86 stuff was better, because it actually worked reliably, at roughly the same price. Like literally just go buy an off-lease mini-tower or USFF mini-pc for $10 from a surplus store, even. This goes doubly when you consider all the problems with the early rpi. Like basically it uses USB 2.0 (unidirectional 500mbps) as a system bus... but it also dropped USB packets under load due to bugs in the firmware[0], that nobody outside the Pi foundation could address because Broadcom didn't release the documentation for like 5 years. [0] https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/19 https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/19 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40701297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40701297
- nirav72 2y ago
  yeah, even for GPIO interfacing, there are far cheaper options (ESP32) than the raspberry Pi out there. The Pi was an appealing piece of hardware about 10 years. But now, not sure it makes sense to use as a low cost server.
  - adriancr 2y ago
    There's raspberry pi pico and pi zero that compete against esp32. The product in title uses a rp2040 for gpio. I for one prefer the raspberry products (nice sdk for pico and much more features for not that much more power use/cost on pi zero) I do have ESP32s as well but they're mostly stuck to micropython.
- adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
  one big advantage pi had over minipc is a lot of the minipcs are in the 30 watt range while the early pis were single digit watts. that advantage has decayed over time though...
  - jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    A good number of the mini PC's idle under 12W. My i5-6500t does. Yeah they ramp up under load to 30W, but a before rpi5 to start to ramp up like that would've been way more compute than an RPi could offer. Also notably there are some low power options too. My first kube cluster was on these nice 2014 Acer Chromebox cxi's; they idled at 6w! Crazy slow 2957u Celeron processor, but I used it a node as my desktop for ~2 years (with 16GB ram). But it had gobs of USB bandwidth, mpcie wifi, sata, gigabit, and if i'd sprung for i3 models it probably would have been downright pleasant to use versus the 1.6GHz no turbo dual core I was getting. Personally I've avoided the atom cores generally, but there's been a variety of decent low power offerings of big cores for a while. Heck, my Ultrabook tablet is ~6W when running, with screen on, with a i5-7200u. 15W TDP core with some additional TDP up available. Point is, there's been a range of pretty low power x86 offerings. Just, not always super obvious.
    - 2y ago
vladvasiliu 2y ago
According to your link, this board doesn't have built-in PoE, but requires an "optional hat". It links to a "currently unavailable" listing on Amazon, without any price info. However, I agree that if it costs as much as a RPI, it looks really great.
- srcreigh 2y ago
  the product page seems to indicate it has built in PoE https://radxa.com/products/x/x4/ https://radxa.com/products/x/x4/
  - geerlingguy 2y ago
    It says "PoE Support", but requires a separate HAT (the transformer alone would take up too much board space to fit on the Pi-sized footprint). It has a 4-pin PoE header just like the Pi. I would imagine it would need at least PoE+ with a 30W power budget.
    - entropicdrifter 2y ago
      The N100 SoC needs ~10w, so with accessories, maybe 15-20 should be enough, unless I'm missing some massive inefficiency in PoE itself
irusensei 2y ago
I think hardware transcoding is a bit overrated since pretty much every device nowadays can decode most formats at a good resolution and frame rate.
- Teknoman117 2y ago
  I would hardly call hardware video decode/encode overrated. A hardware block will do the work with a fraction of the power that the CPU would take to do it, and in the case of something like a Pi 4 or Pi 5, you're now spending all of your limited CPU on video, rather than doing something useful. Maybe not a problem when you're plugged into the wall, but for those of us using Raspberry Pi's (and other computers) in mobile situations (laptops, robots, drones, etc.), the power consumption is a huge concern. My main usage of the Pi 4's video encoder was to record the video from the camera "for free" while the CPU was nearly maxed out doing stuff in OpenCV.
  - irusensei 2y ago
    You misunderstood what I said. Transcode is not necessary. Pretty much every device that comes in the Happy McMeal box comes with HEVC and h264 decoding capabilities. So you just stream the data directly to the device which does the decoding with little energy as you mentioned. Transcoding is unnecessary.
    - ssl-3 2y ago
      Some folks have media libraries that can be used outside of their homes, and sometimes they use them with very limited bandwidth. With transcoding, I can keep my high-bitrate 4k scan of Steamboat Willy at home, and stream the content to my pocket computer with the shitty free wifi on a public bus if I feel like it.
ThatPlayer 2y ago
The issue with a raspberry case is that N100 Radxa boards have the N100 on the bottom. That's where the heatsink has to go.
- wpm 2y ago
  The X4's biggest problem is the Pi form factor, which yeah, is Radxa's mistake, but also a good reason not to buy a Pi 5, cause you'll also need a heatsink, which'll then interfere with your GPIO access, fan header, and so on. If I have a small eInk display HAT, I'd much prefer not sandwiching the hot bits between the really hot bits and my display.
- stuckkeys 2y ago
  Shoot. Forgot about that. Wonder if the cooling cases or the solution available will be bulky.
moffkalast 2y ago
> the 40-pin GPIO header handled through a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller. This part would be a reason why: very low GPIO throughput since you're limited to what can be shoved through serial and it all has to be must be manually processed by the extremely slow RP2040. The main upside with something like a Pi 4 is that it has zero overhead access to it via kernel api, so you can pipe hilarious amounts of data through its pins or address i2c devices directly from python with existing libraries for almost every sensor, etc. The Pi 5 using it through a PCIe southbridge is quite a lot worse, especially since it broke all compatibility and it still can't even drive even a simple WS2812 led strip yet a year after release. They've thrown away the last 10 years of community support and development since the layout was standardized with the Pi 2.
- mritun 2y ago
  RO2040 isn’t slow - it’s literally one of the fastest on the market. It’s a dual core microcontroller that can easily run both cores at 133-250+ MHz. https://github.com/Wren6991/PicoDVI https://github.com/Wren6991/PicoDVI The GPIO on RPi is not very useful for precision work and you’re limited to using SPI (usually to talk to an auxiliary microcontroller). The GPIO on RP2040 is so good that you can use it as 24 channel 100Msps logic analyzer in a pinch. https://github.com/gusmanb/logicanalyzer https://github.com/gusmanb/logicanalyzer
  - girvo 2y ago
    Yeah anyone calling the RP2040 slow for GPIO hasn't used it in anger. The PIO is amazing.
    - squarefoot 2y ago
      Smaller CPU aside, how do its GPIOs compare performance-wise to the older PRU contained in TI Sitara CPUs used in BeagleBoards? Many complained about the small number of channels on TI processors (only 4 if memory serves) therefore I wonder if it could be considered a successor where very fast digital I/O is needed but power and memory to run Linux is not because it's being hosted and run on a bigger nearby CPU.
icelancer 2y ago
The Radxa X4 is already sold out and pulled from listings by the manufacturer. I expect massive markups for awhile just the RPi 5.
- geerlingguy 2y ago
  I think the price points for Pi 5 are staying where they are ($60/80 was launch price for Pi 5 4/8GB, respectively). The fact the boards have a 1 and 2 GB resistor option for memory means I'm guessing those were planned (or are planned still?) and would logically slot in at a $40 price point. That would give back some of the price-advantage for many Pi use cases, since at least for me, about half the things I use Pis for, I could do within 1 (preferably 2) GB of RAM.
- sharpshadow 2y ago
  Already sold out? How many did they make 100?
  - stuckkeys 2y ago
    I know right. Also they have the 16gb version which is nowhere to be found.
boznz 2y ago
I am happy to pay the NOT made in China tax for the RPi.
- greggsy 2y ago
  Why?
  - me_me_me 2y ago
    to strengthen local industry post-covid this should be crystal clear. You are at mercy of other countries if you do not produce anything.
    - dboreham 2y ago
      Probably need to look into where all the components are manufactured too. Final assembly is only one step in the process.
      - actionfromafar 2y ago
        Still incrementally more resilient.
        talldayo 2y ago
        Something tells me Broadcom doesn't agree.
        actionfromafar 2y ago
        If you have the know-how and factory to do final assembly, it's at least one more step in a long supply chain you have mastered. Broadcom or no Broadcom.
        talldayo 2y ago
        "At least" is certainly right. You'd be adopting the lowest-margin, most competitive and lowest-hiring work from China. And you'd still be paying a price-premium for a dubious improvement in quality, if any improvement at all. Eventually people have to realize that America cannot re-take the jobs we sent to Mexico and China. The modernization we enjoy today is entirely predicated on the abject abuse of people that are protected by inferior governments and weak economies. To import their jobs means to import their standard-of-living.
tcfhgj 2y ago
How about running arm software?
- greggsy 2y ago
  what can you run on ARM that you can’t run on x86?
  - tcfhgj 2y ago
    Run arm apps natively?
    - wpm 2y ago
      What apps? Name one.
      - cornstalks 2y ago
        Doing development for ARM is easier when you have an actual ARM machine. Any project with assembly in particular.
        stonogo 2y ago
        I find pushing builds into an image and running them under qemu-system-aarch64 far easier than screwing around with hardware.
      - dboreham 2y ago
        Not the parent but in developing and testing server software it's necessary to have the target architecture available because all sorts of random crap changes between architecture to the point that once things become more than trivially complex, the probability if things breaking when the CPU type is changes becomes close to 1.0.
edwinjones 2y ago
3x? Geekbench scores seem similar for the pi 5 and this machine. https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7095621 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7095621
- HankB99 2y ago
  I think it's highly dependent on the workload under test. The N100 includes Quick Sync (and the Pi 5 does not) so any processing that includes video transcoding will be a lot faster on the N100.
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    Can confirm, I run a Jellyfin server with an N100 and the thing is a transcoding beast when you set it up right
    - jmw 2y ago
      Cool to hear… especially in the power specs for that proc. If you don’t mind, What specs does the transcoding machine have and what’s an example of a workload it handles well?
      - entropicdrifter 2y ago
        16G single channel ram, 512G NVMe SSD. It can transcode a 4K HDR10 movie encoded at 60Mbps down to 1080p SDR ~15Mbps at around 78fps. 4K HDR to 4K SDR at around 35fps I think. Those are typically the most intensive workloads I throw at it. Dolby Vision encoding is a bit harder on it, I think it uses OpenCL rather than VPP tonemapping for that, so those can drop as low as like 28fps when going 4k DV -> 4K SDR, but for my purposes that's the most intensive workload and those would all be 24fps movies, so it generally just works great. I also have a fair bit of anime encoded in Hi10p h264 format, and it has no trouble decoding and re-encoding those (to h265) with burned-in subtitles. We're talking 90+fps. I note Hi10p mostly because hardware decoders for it don't exist. It's at the encoding step that we usually see it getting close to its limits for transcode speed, hence why 4k HDR to 4k SDR is the most intensive load. It's probably also safe to assume that when transcoding down to 1080p Jellyfin puts the scaling down filter first in the ffmpeg pipeline so that the tonemapping processes are less CPU/GPU/memory bandwidth intensive as well.
TiredOfLife 2y ago
It was $60 + $70 for shipping + $70 in taxes/dues
greggsy 2y ago
The fact that it has an RP2040 MCU makes this a pretty darn compelling product
brookst 2y ago
It’s an impressive system for sure, but I will happily pay a price premium for the Pi ecosystem where I am unlikely to be the very first person trying to deploy any particular package.
- 4gotunameagain 2y ago
  It is highly unlikely you will be pioneering on x86 deployments as well.
- ThrowawayR2 2y ago
  It's an ordinary x86 board that can run any x86 Linux distribution. You are vastly more likely to be the first person trying to deploy any particular package on a Pi than an x86 computer.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    So with this board, I can just plug in a LibreELEC image and start watching digital media on my TV from my sofa, while controlling it with my regular TV remote via CEC? That's the kind of thing that the Raspberry Pi's combination of consistency and popularity does provide.
    - theshrike79 2y ago
      No, but you can run multiple docker containers on it for years without the fear of your SD card failing from excess writes as it uses standard M.2 SSDs If a CEC compatible media player is what you need, then the Pi is a good choice. Or if you need GPIO. Otherwise they're horribly overpriced compared to N97/N100 minipcs, with the exception of the Zeros.
      - ssl-3 2y ago
        I haven't had any issues with SD cards failing in Raspberry Pis. But I've only got about 14 machine-years of using them so far. On a long-enough timeline, I'm sure that failure is inevitable. The various Android phones I've had over the past decade and a half, however: Now those have killed some SD cards. YMMV. (BRB. I think imma dump RetroPie onto an SD card, plug in a PS3 controller, and do some trouble-free some vintage gaming on the Raspberry Pi that was doing media center duties with CEC a minute ago. If I have time, and it seems fun-enough, I'll get the controller working with Bluetooth. And then I think I'll plug the LibreELEC card back in and crash out on the couch watching a movie.)
nxobject 2y ago
This board needs some supporting hardware that RPi doesn’t - a fan and wifi antennae, if I remember. Radxa includes these with a case as well, so the added cost is trivial, but at that point the footprint’s more than doubled. (That’s not to say that this isn’t preferable; just that it makes different trade offs that in some cases don’t work.)

paulmd 2y ago

i've done the rant many times before [1] but frankly rpi has almost never made sense. there were always things like the ECS Liva/Liva X for $100-125 that were fully-featured, for roughly the same price as a rpi once you consider all the shit you'll need to get that $45 computer booted up. The Liva (and similar booksizes/net-tops, and similar things like AM1 platform from AMD) benefited hugely from using standard drivers and standard BIOS versus a massive amount of early ARM jank (the early RPi days a lot of things were actually soft-float, let alone niceties like UEFI!). the best argument for rpi has always been the combination of GPIO and linux. But that's a double-edged sword too, because linux isn't really very good at hard-realtime. And you can always just get a Bus Pirate or similar tool for doing just plain GPIO. And nowadays the ESP32 has basically completely displaced it for a lot of those sorts of "GPIO glue" roles. If you didn't need that, like if you just wanted a low-power fileserver or HTPC... the x86 stuff was better, because it actually worked reliably, at roughly the same price. Like literally just go buy an off-lease mini-tower or USFF mini-pc for $10 from a surplus store, even. This goes doubly when you consider all the problems with the early rpi. Like basically it uses USB 2.0 (unidirectional 500mbps) as a system bus... but it also dropped USB packets under load due to bugs in the firmware[0], that nobody outside the Pi foundation could address because Broadcom didn't release the documentation for like 5 years. [0] https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/19 https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/issues/19 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40701297 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40701297

nirav72 2y ago
yeah, even for GPIO interfacing, there are far cheaper options (ESP32) than the raspberry Pi out there. The Pi was an appealing piece of hardware about 10 years. But now, not sure it makes sense to use as a low cost server.
- adriancr 2y ago
  There's raspberry pi pico and pi zero that compete against esp32. The product in title uses a rp2040 for gpio. I for one prefer the raspberry products (nice sdk for pico and much more features for not that much more power use/cost on pi zero) I do have ESP32s as well but they're mostly stuck to micropython.
adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
one big advantage pi had over minipc is a lot of the minipcs are in the 30 watt range while the early pis were single digit watts. that advantage has decayed over time though...
- jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  A good number of the mini PC's idle under 12W. My i5-6500t does. Yeah they ramp up under load to 30W, but a before rpi5 to start to ramp up like that would've been way more compute than an RPi could offer. Also notably there are some low power options too. My first kube cluster was on these nice 2014 Acer Chromebox cxi's; they idled at 6w! Crazy slow 2957u Celeron processor, but I used it a node as my desktop for ~2 years (with 16GB ram). But it had gobs of USB bandwidth, mpcie wifi, sata, gigabit, and if i'd sprung for i3 models it probably would have been downright pleasant to use versus the 1.6GHz no turbo dual core I was getting. Personally I've avoided the atom cores generally, but there's been a variety of decent low power offerings of big cores for a while. Heck, my Ultrabook tablet is ~6W when running, with screen on, with a i5-7200u. 15W TDP core with some additional TDP up available. Point is, there's been a range of pretty low power x86 offerings. Just, not always super obvious.
  - 2y ago

vladvasiliu 2y ago

According to your link, this board doesn't have built-in PoE, but requires an "optional hat". It links to a "currently unavailable" listing on Amazon, without any price info. However, I agree that if it costs as much as a RPI, it looks really great.

srcreigh 2y ago
the product page seems to indicate it has built in PoE https://radxa.com/products/x/x4/ https://radxa.com/products/x/x4/
- geerlingguy 2y ago
  It says "PoE Support", but requires a separate HAT (the transformer alone would take up too much board space to fit on the Pi-sized footprint). It has a 4-pin PoE header just like the Pi. I would imagine it would need at least PoE+ with a 30W power budget.
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    The N100 SoC needs ~10w, so with accessories, maybe 15-20 should be enough, unless I'm missing some massive inefficiency in PoE itself

irusensei 2y ago

I think hardware transcoding is a bit overrated since pretty much every device nowadays can decode most formats at a good resolution and frame rate.

Teknoman117 2y ago
I would hardly call hardware video decode/encode overrated. A hardware block will do the work with a fraction of the power that the CPU would take to do it, and in the case of something like a Pi 4 or Pi 5, you're now spending all of your limited CPU on video, rather than doing something useful. Maybe not a problem when you're plugged into the wall, but for those of us using Raspberry Pi's (and other computers) in mobile situations (laptops, robots, drones, etc.), the power consumption is a huge concern. My main usage of the Pi 4's video encoder was to record the video from the camera "for free" while the CPU was nearly maxed out doing stuff in OpenCV.
- irusensei 2y ago
  You misunderstood what I said. Transcode is not necessary. Pretty much every device that comes in the Happy McMeal box comes with HEVC and h264 decoding capabilities. So you just stream the data directly to the device which does the decoding with little energy as you mentioned. Transcoding is unnecessary.
  - ssl-3 2y ago
    Some folks have media libraries that can be used outside of their homes, and sometimes they use them with very limited bandwidth. With transcoding, I can keep my high-bitrate 4k scan of Steamboat Willy at home, and stream the content to my pocket computer with the shitty free wifi on a public bus if I feel like it.

ThatPlayer 2y ago

The issue with a raspberry case is that N100 Radxa boards have the N100 on the bottom. That's where the heatsink has to go.

wpm 2y ago
The X4's biggest problem is the Pi form factor, which yeah, is Radxa's mistake, but also a good reason not to buy a Pi 5, cause you'll also need a heatsink, which'll then interfere with your GPIO access, fan header, and so on. If I have a small eInk display HAT, I'd much prefer not sandwiching the hot bits between the really hot bits and my display.
stuckkeys 2y ago
Shoot. Forgot about that. Wonder if the cooling cases or the solution available will be bulky.

moffkalast 2y ago

> the 40-pin GPIO header handled through a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller. This part would be a reason why: very low GPIO throughput since you're limited to what can be shoved through serial and it all has to be must be manually processed by the extremely slow RP2040. The main upside with something like a Pi 4 is that it has zero overhead access to it via kernel api, so you can pipe hilarious amounts of data through its pins or address i2c devices directly from python with existing libraries for almost every sensor, etc. The Pi 5 using it through a PCIe southbridge is quite a lot worse, especially since it broke all compatibility and it still can't even drive even a simple WS2812 led strip yet a year after release. They've thrown away the last 10 years of community support and development since the layout was standardized with the Pi 2.

mritun 2y ago
RO2040 isn’t slow - it’s literally one of the fastest on the market. It’s a dual core microcontroller that can easily run both cores at 133-250+ MHz. https://github.com/Wren6991/PicoDVI https://github.com/Wren6991/PicoDVI The GPIO on RPi is not very useful for precision work and you’re limited to using SPI (usually to talk to an auxiliary microcontroller). The GPIO on RP2040 is so good that you can use it as 24 channel 100Msps logic analyzer in a pinch. https://github.com/gusmanb/logicanalyzer https://github.com/gusmanb/logicanalyzer
- girvo 2y ago
  Yeah anyone calling the RP2040 slow for GPIO hasn't used it in anger. The PIO is amazing.
  - squarefoot 2y ago
    Smaller CPU aside, how do its GPIOs compare performance-wise to the older PRU contained in TI Sitara CPUs used in BeagleBoards? Many complained about the small number of channels on TI processors (only 4 if memory serves) therefore I wonder if it could be considered a successor where very fast digital I/O is needed but power and memory to run Linux is not because it's being hosted and run on a bigger nearby CPU.

icelancer 2y ago

The Radxa X4 is already sold out and pulled from listings by the manufacturer. I expect massive markups for awhile just the RPi 5.

geerlingguy 2y ago
I think the price points for Pi 5 are staying where they are ($60/80 was launch price for Pi 5 4/8GB, respectively). The fact the boards have a 1 and 2 GB resistor option for memory means I'm guessing those were planned (or are planned still?) and would logically slot in at a $40 price point. That would give back some of the price-advantage for many Pi use cases, since at least for me, about half the things I use Pis for, I could do within 1 (preferably 2) GB of RAM.
sharpshadow 2y ago
Already sold out? How many did they make 100?
- stuckkeys 2y ago
  I know right. Also they have the 16gb version which is nowhere to be found.

boznz 2y ago

I am happy to pay the NOT made in China tax for the RPi.

greggsy 2y ago
Why?
- me_me_me 2y ago
  to strengthen local industry post-covid this should be crystal clear. You are at mercy of other countries if you do not produce anything.
  - dboreham 2y ago
    Probably need to look into where all the components are manufactured too. Final assembly is only one step in the process.
    - actionfromafar 2y ago
      Still incrementally more resilient.
      - talldayo 2y ago
        Something tells me Broadcom doesn't agree.
        actionfromafar 2y ago
        If you have the know-how and factory to do final assembly, it's at least one more step in a long supply chain you have mastered. Broadcom or no Broadcom.
        talldayo 2y ago
        "At least" is certainly right. You'd be adopting the lowest-margin, most competitive and lowest-hiring work from China. And you'd still be paying a price-premium for a dubious improvement in quality, if any improvement at all. Eventually people have to realize that America cannot re-take the jobs we sent to Mexico and China. The modernization we enjoy today is entirely predicated on the abject abuse of people that are protected by inferior governments and weak economies. To import their jobs means to import their standard-of-living.

tcfhgj 2y ago

How about running arm software?

greggsy 2y ago
what can you run on ARM that you can’t run on x86?
- tcfhgj 2y ago
  Run arm apps natively?
  - wpm 2y ago
    What apps? Name one.
    - cornstalks 2y ago
      Doing development for ARM is easier when you have an actual ARM machine. Any project with assembly in particular.
      - stonogo 2y ago
        I find pushing builds into an image and running them under qemu-system-aarch64 far easier than screwing around with hardware.
    - dboreham 2y ago
      Not the parent but in developing and testing server software it's necessary to have the target architecture available because all sorts of random crap changes between architecture to the point that once things become more than trivially complex, the probability if things breaking when the CPU type is changes becomes close to 1.0.

edwinjones 2y ago

3x? Geekbench scores seem similar for the pi 5 and this machine. https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7095621 https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/7095621

HankB99 2y ago
I think it's highly dependent on the workload under test. The N100 includes Quick Sync (and the Pi 5 does not) so any processing that includes video transcoding will be a lot faster on the N100.
- entropicdrifter 2y ago
  Can confirm, I run a Jellyfin server with an N100 and the thing is a transcoding beast when you set it up right
  - jmw 2y ago
    Cool to hear… especially in the power specs for that proc. If you don’t mind, What specs does the transcoding machine have and what’s an example of a workload it handles well?
    - entropicdrifter 2y ago
      16G single channel ram, 512G NVMe SSD. It can transcode a 4K HDR10 movie encoded at 60Mbps down to 1080p SDR ~15Mbps at around 78fps. 4K HDR to 4K SDR at around 35fps I think. Those are typically the most intensive workloads I throw at it. Dolby Vision encoding is a bit harder on it, I think it uses OpenCL rather than VPP tonemapping for that, so those can drop as low as like 28fps when going 4k DV -> 4K SDR, but for my purposes that's the most intensive workload and those would all be 24fps movies, so it generally just works great. I also have a fair bit of anime encoded in Hi10p h264 format, and it has no trouble decoding and re-encoding those (to h265) with burned-in subtitles. We're talking 90+fps. I note Hi10p mostly because hardware decoders for it don't exist. It's at the encoding step that we usually see it getting close to its limits for transcode speed, hence why 4k HDR to 4k SDR is the most intensive load. It's probably also safe to assume that when transcoding down to 1080p Jellyfin puts the scaling down filter first in the ffmpeg pipeline so that the tonemapping processes are less CPU/GPU/memory bandwidth intensive as well.

TiredOfLife 2y ago

It was $60 + $70 for shipping + $70 in taxes/dues

greggsy 2y ago

The fact that it has an RP2040 MCU makes this a pretty darn compelling product

brookst 2y ago

It’s an impressive system for sure, but I will happily pay a price premium for the Pi ecosystem where I am unlikely to be the very first person trying to deploy any particular package.

4gotunameagain 2y ago
It is highly unlikely you will be pioneering on x86 deployments as well.
ThrowawayR2 2y ago
It's an ordinary x86 board that can run any x86 Linux distribution. You are vastly more likely to be the first person trying to deploy any particular package on a Pi than an x86 computer.
- ssl-3 2y ago
  So with this board, I can just plug in a LibreELEC image and start watching digital media on my TV from my sofa, while controlling it with my regular TV remote via CEC? That's the kind of thing that the Raspberry Pi's combination of consistency and popularity does provide.
  - theshrike79 2y ago
    No, but you can run multiple docker containers on it for years without the fear of your SD card failing from excess writes as it uses standard M.2 SSDs If a CEC compatible media player is what you need, then the Pi is a good choice. Or if you need GPIO. Otherwise they're horribly overpriced compared to N97/N100 minipcs, with the exception of the Zeros.
    - ssl-3 2y ago
      I haven't had any issues with SD cards failing in Raspberry Pis. But I've only got about 14 machine-years of using them so far. On a long-enough timeline, I'm sure that failure is inevitable. The various Android phones I've had over the past decade and a half, however: Now those have killed some SD cards. YMMV. (BRB. I think imma dump RetroPie onto an SD card, plug in a PS3 controller, and do some trouble-free some vintage gaming on the Raspberry Pi that was doing media center duties with CEC a minute ago. If I have time, and it seems fun-enough, I'll get the controller working with Bluetooth. And then I think I'll plug the LibreELEC card back in and crash out on the couch watching a movie.)

nxobject 2y ago

This board needs some supporting hardware that RPi doesn’t - a fan and wifi antennae, if I remember. Radxa includes these with a case as well, so the added cost is trivial, but at that point the footprint’s more than doubled. (That’s not to say that this isn’t preferable; just that it makes different trade offs that in some cases don’t work.)