Well, the lesson I learned is ‘buy IT stuff when you need it’. There will always be something faster, better, less expensive just next month so when waiting for the best opportunity you will have to wait indefinitely.
Asides that what’s your use case? If it’s for example ‘light Linux desktop with rootfs on SSD’ then this potential 30% higher multi-threaded performance of VIM3 is meaningless but way faster NVMe SSD access with Edge(-V) might result in an overall faster desktop experience. Also GPU/VPU acceleration do matter here a lot and as far as I know with RK3399 we’re already there but no idea about A311D (rule of thumb: the older the SoC the better the software support)
Staring at numbers or graphs made with kitchen-sink benchmarks IMO is rather meaningless unless use cases are considered. And also all the relevant stuff that happens aside ‘raw CPU horsepower’ (that’s a lot especially on SBC where drivers and settings play an important role).
A lot depends on the specific use of the devices. I didn’t compare EDGE to VIM3, but I compared it to N2. In a number of use cases, EDGE wins against S922. IMHO all artificial test, it’s a game marketers who show some conventional figures, which can vary from “small nuances” (conditions).
My use case is simple really, just as an Android box for entertainment purposes. I do usually multi-task though. Streaming, VPN and torrent running for a lot of the day. I’m a bit fussy, I really like to know I’ve got all the power I need and more & in a small form factor that doesn’t get too hot…
Then CPU performance benchmarks are close to irrelevant for you anyway. VPN might benefit from ARMv8 Crypto Extensions (which both RK3399 and A311D have) and torrent downloading has some light demands wrt random IO of the storage in question. Also no differentiation whatsoever.
GPU driver support with Android usually is no issue (since those SoCs are made for Android) but I’ve no idea about GPU performance differences and whether they’re important for anything besides gaming (I doubt it).
The system currently runs from a sd card with Balbes armbian 5.88 latest image based on buster and kernel 5.2-rc4. The board is in the DIY case, with the new vim heatsink, but without fan so throttling must have occured.
Thank you but as you can see the performance of your install is inferior caused obviously by no cpufreq support with kernel 5.2. Your scores are lower than 50% of what usual RK3399 builds with either RK 4.4 BSP or older mainline kernel variants provide. According to 7-zip’s own calibration routine both the big and little CPU cores are limited to 600 MHz.
I was more interested in VIM3 benchmarks since with RK3399 everything is already known and result variation as in this case is ‘settings’
Definitely, but I think his point was: why release something new and better so close after you just sent the product that comes before. More like they probably cannibalize themselves except for users that need the edge (no pun) that Edge gives when it comes to display/camera and M2 cappabilities (here the differences). The thing is to see which one is worth for you, but in general if displays/M2 doesn’t matter to you and they end up having the same price, there’s no point in picking the Edge. The Edge is already comming, and I will probably also pick the VIM3 to decide which one fits better in my case.
That was precisely my point. With a negligible difference in performance and the fact that I’ve got to mess around with a case now, I would have just gone with the VIM-3 had I known. I regret my Edge-V purchase now and I haven’t even been able to use it yet, still got to doctor that damn case…
I always wondered which use case justifies spending those huge amounts of money for a tiny ARM thing (where you need to add an additional 50 bucks for enclosure, heatsink and fan). Especially now that the RPi 4 is available and still sells at below 40 bucks…
Great discussion topic! Don’t want to derail your performance thread, but I think the point is that SBCs/SoMs are used for all sorts of things, not just file servers and routers.
Your VIMS proposal would clearly be a market success for NAS at the price point you propose, whereas it’s difficult to justify a fuller-featured and more expensive board like the VIM3 or Edge V in that role. Most of a full-featured board’s strengths would be unused for a server.
But for some applications, price is less important than oodles of GPIO, quality construction, and a shape that works for integration.
An example: I’m designing a livestock feed system full of sensors, heating elements, motors and solenoid valves. I’m planning to use an Edge as controller and to drive the interface. These machines cost $15-20k+. A $100 SoM is still cheaper than just one of the solenoid pinch valves; even a $250 SoM would be cheaper than each precision gear pump.
What I like about the Edge:
plenty of CPU and RAM for future software expansion
loads of GPIO & SPI, not constrained by trying to squeeze onto a 40-pin DIP header
built-in eMMC so I don’t have to deal with MMC on my own board, or use SD cards
built-in wifi so I don’t have to plonk an external wifi module on my own board
RSDB is really handy for infrastructure internet + ad-hoc net between parts of machine
module form factor: separate RPi style board and 1.27mm ribbon cable looks amateurish
support for decent resolution eDP touchscreens
Build quality is where some of the competitors really let themselves down. For example, I went through three Rock Pi 4 boards before I got one that was tidily soldered and not a mess. Users on the forum complain about connectors falling off, and certainly on the board I have here, there’s hot glue reinforcing the headphone jack from the factory because the attachment points aren’t up to the job. (I wondered if I’d be disappointed by Edge too, but actually I’m very impressed with the quality — which is quite unusual for me!)
Proper mainline kernel support really, really matters too, at least to me. I’d happily pay double not to be stuck in some board-specific kernel cul-de-sac, and similarly for u-boot. This horrible habit of so many ARM vendors turns long-term development/maintenance of a product into a complete nightmare!
Honestly doing this now is unfair, since nobody knew until today that Raspberry Pi 4 was to be released now or that it would have a 4xA72. Until today if you wanted a good SoC you had to go with +100bucks boards, with a few exceptions. Not that I’m going against RPi4, on the contrary I love that we finally got a powerful SoC for so cheap and will get the 4GB one once it’s in stock again. But it’s basically what ChrisW said. Khadas make good form factor boards that can be suited for commertial or even industrial products, whereas an Raspberry Pi is a general purpose computer with a jack of all trades form factor to please a big ammount of users. They also include eMMC. And if you were already complaining about the cooling system Khadas has, now imagine the nightmare it will be to properly cool a RPi4 having all that tiny space for general heatsinks/fans.
One of the more disappointing things from the Raspberry Pi 4 announcement from my personal perspective (wanting to integrate boards into low-volume but high-end products) is that it still has that horrible form factor.
Having all manner of random connectors plonked higgledy piggledy along two perpendicular edges is practically guaranteed to make it a nuisance and untidy to integrate… and other designers then copy the same mess in order to be compatible with cases, add-on boards and the rest of the RPi ecosystem. Argh!
I’m glad at least some boards are designed with better taste.
Honestly if they released a RPi Compute Stick 4 with the 4xA72 that would be perfect for me since it would still cost 30-35 bucks and then you can design your own board to fit your product, but the normal RPi form factor doesn’t fit my needs and has many connectors that I won’t be using (not a problem in general, but they would lie in the outside part) and the Compute Stick 3 isn’t powerful enough.
I was also looking the Rock960 which was really similar to the Edge-V but I didn’t even got a response from them, so I prefered to go for the one that has an active community instead of finding myself in a dead end without any help.
Yes, I agree: Rock960 has a nicer form factor than the RPi. I had one here to play with last year. Because of 96boards compatibility, it brings far fewer GPIO lines out on its connectors than Edge does on the MXM3 fingers; no ethernet, no eDP, etc. My conclusion was that Edge was a better board to work with.
The previous generations of Compute Modules were more bare-boned than Rock960 or Edge. Sometimes an advantage, especially when cost is paramount, but it can be a pain to run all the impedance controlled traces, matched pairs and high speed connections on your own board just to add (say) a standard wifi module or a DP/HDMI socket. Rock960 and Edge sit in a nice halfway house.
Thank you for this feedback. Highly appreciated since me not being a hardware guy at all always having a hard time to understand why users choose this or that SBC which looks just overpriced based on my (rather primitive) use cases
Since when it’s a mistake when you get eMMC plus an SD slot? It would be if they didn’t include the SD slot, which is not the case. Also considering the ammount of corrupted SD posts and how to prevent SD corruption (having to do some trickery like disable swaping or changing mount types) I wouldn’t say relying only on an SD card like RPi does any good.
