Raspberry Pi 3

[jl_678]

Hi,

I am a backer of the Pine 64 and am looking forward to the arrival of my unit board in March.  It is always interesting to see what other companies are doing and I noticed that the Raspberry Pi Foundation release the Raspberry Pi 3, and it has some interesting specs.  Here are some highlights:

1. 64 bit Quad Cortex A53 @ 1.2GHz
   
2. 1 GB SDRAM
   
3. 40mhz VideoCore IV
   
4. Integrated WiFi and Bluetooth
   
5. Price - $35
   

I find these specs to be interesting and the cost is competitive to the Pine considering that it includes WiFi and Bluetooth.  I am curious about other people's perspectives.

I have multiple RPi's and love the strength of Linux and community support.  The SBC is an interesting alternative.  Do you agree?  Why or why not?

[coleshores]

Hi,

I am a backer of the Pine 64 and am looking forward to the arrival of my unit board in March.  It is always interesting to see what other companies are doing and I noticed that the Raspberry Pi Foundation release the Raspberry Pi 3, and it has some interesting specs.  Here are some highlights:

1. 64 bit Quad Cortex A53 @ 1.2GHz
   
2. 1 GB SDRAM
   
3. 40mhz VideoCore IV
   
4. Integrated WiFi and Bluetooth
   
5. Price - $35
   

I find these specs to be interesting and the cost is competitive to the Pine considering that it includes WiFi and Bluetooth.  I am curious about other people's perspectives.

I have multiple RPi's and love the strength of Linux and community support.  The SBC is an interesting alternative.  Do you agree?  Why or why not?

They both are great depending on their uses cases.  As a general purpose computer I think the Pi 3 has an edge since it has much better GPU driver support and community; the integrated wifi would come in handy for that.  Bluetooth would be good for makers However...

From a maker and server perspective, I think the Pine A64 is far and away better.  The network isnt 10/100.. it is 10/100/1000 and not hanging off the USB bus like the Pi 3.  This is important for me personally since I currently use a Pi 2 as a TVHeadend Server and 2 HD streams, 1 for PVR and 1 for playback induces stuttering(against the micro SD card) thats not to include other things I could add as services such as Samba for MP3s, which I also currently do now with a 128GB USB drive.  To add to that, the 2GB of ram will also come in handy for these services as well.

Im glad the Pi 3 is is going to be ARMv8.  That will kick start alot of software to be compiled for that target which will make it easy to bring to Pine.

[jl_678]

Hi,

I am a backer of the Pine 64 and am looking forward to the arrival of my unit board in March.  It is always interesting to see what other companies are doing and I noticed that the Raspberry Pi Foundation release the Raspberry Pi 3, and it has some interesting specs.  Here are some highlights:

1. 64 bit Quad Cortex A53 @ 1.2GHz
   
2. 1 GB SDRAM
   
3. 40mhz VideoCore IV
   
4. Integrated WiFi and Bluetooth
   
5. Price - $35
   

I find these specs to be interesting and the cost is competitive to the Pine considering that it includes WiFi and Bluetooth.  I am curious about other people's perspectives.

I have multiple RPi's and love the strength of Linux and community support.  The SBC is an interesting alternative.  Do you agree?  Why or why not?

They both are great depending on their uses cases.  As a general purpose computer I think the Pi 3 has an edge since it has much better GPU driver support and community; the integrated wifi would come in handy for that.  Bluetooth would be good for makers However...

From a maker and server perspective, I think the Pine A64 is far and away better.  The network isnt 10/100.. it is 10/100/1000 and not hanging off the USB bus like the Pi 3.  This is important for me personally since I currently use a Pi 2 as a TVHeadend Server and 2 HD streams, 1 for PVR and 1 for playback induces stuttering(against the micro SD card) thats not to include other things I could add as services such as Samba for MP3s, which I also currently do now with a 128GB USB drive.  To add to that, the 2GB of ram will also come in handy for these services as well.

Im glad the Pi 3 is is going to be ARMv8.  That will kick start alot of software to be compiled for that target which will make it easy to bring to Pine.

Hi,

These are all excellent points, and I completely agree.  The one thing that I love about Pi and hope to see develop here is the strong software ecosystem.  I still worry about GPU support and Linux support in general on Pine.  I know that it is being worked on and am confident that we will get there.  However, it is clearly far less mature than what you get on the Pi.  On the bright side, the Pi is still saddled with 32-bit code and so Pine has the advantage of going straight to 64-bit.

Your point about Gigabit Ethernet and network throughput is a great one that I did not mention.

[janjwerner]

Pros for Pine:
- better ethernet, 1gb not on the USB bus 
- more ram in some configurations (2gb)
- Android images readily available 
- 64 bit linux readily available (lonsleep edition)

Pros for RPi
- better community support / compatibility with tons of older projects
- better software support ( again being in the market for quite a while)
- Windows 10 IOT 

It is great to see more hardware in this space, sure it gets crowded. Pine is the first affordable 64bit arm devel board. How successful it be it depends on the community. RPi atm does not have 64 bit OS, but it is matter of hours / days. Not sure why the foundation didn't come up with 64bit os from the start. 
Having more affordable aarch64 hardware means there will be more software build for that platform - win for everyone. 
I got previous edition of the Pi with the csi camera and I don't see a reason to get a new version atm.

[JulianM]

I've got a Raspberry Pi 2 and I'm using KODI with it.
In the last time I tried to use Netflix with it and... It's not possible, because of missing-DRM-Support in all browsers for ARM.
The only possibility is to copy the DRM-plugin of Chrome from ChromeOS into Chromium-browser and "enjoy" Netflix in SD-quality... Great. Not.

Android on Raspberry Pi 2 laggs like hell, because there is no hardware acceleration support. Nevermind which version of Android you're using on Raspberry Pi.

So, I'm very happy about my 2 ordered Pine64+ with 2 GB RAM.

[stephen fleming]

Here are some more pros for the Pine 64:
- faster memory (DDR3 vs DDR2)
- the wireless module can be upgraded rather than buying a new board
- on board support for a Lithium-ion battery
- more IO pins via expansion headers
- real time clock (RTC) built in to CPU
- connector for touch panel
 Also I just found out on the Raspberry Pi web site that there is a limitation of VideoCore 4 GPU that prevents it from accessing more than 1GB of memory, so there are no plans for a Raspberry Pi with more than 1GB of RAM.

[hazerty]

http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/03/01/r...omparison/

[richc]

After a little (very little) soul searching as to whether continue waiting for the Pine64 or jumping ship to go with the Raspberry Pi 3 ... I've decide it is worth spending a couple dollars to have both and compare myself rather than just reading online opinions. Neither purchase is going to change my lifestyle, and like many, messing around and experimenting with different single board computers is pretty cheap entertainment ... not to mention being mentally stimulating. For the price of an evening out, its worth supporting more than one ... competition spurs improvement (but don't get me started on politics!)

[hazerty]

anyone know the difference between allwinner A64 soc and H64 soc...?

[tllim]

After a little (very little) soul searching as to whether continue waiting for the Pine64 or jumping ship to go with the Raspberry Pi 3 ... I've decide it is worth spending a couple dollars to have both and compare myself rather than just reading online opinions. Neither purchase is going to change my lifestyle, and like many, messing around and experimenting with different single board computers is pretty cheap entertainment ... not to mention being mentally stimulating. For the price of an evening out, its worth supporting more than one ... competition spurs improvement (but don't get me started on politics!)

Just compare both, as you says "competition spurs improvement".
... TL Lim

---

anyone know the difference between allwinner A64 soc and H64 soc...?

Basically the same chip, identical pinout. A64 initial targets for tablet market where consumes less power. H64 targets for home market (AKA media player). There is another one is R18, which is A64 that has long shelf life.