Bad first experience with rock64. Performs worse than my pi :(

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Hi All,

I got a rock64 (4G) thinking it would be an upgrade to my raspberry pi 2 B v1.1 . However I was surprised to discover that it performed worse than my pi.

My experience so far has been:

With raspberry pi:
- install rasbpian
- install ubeify (a wrapper around omxplayer) to use the pi as a media player. the gui kinda sucks but it can handle 1080p no sweat and works well with my 4k tv
- firefox / iceweasel is slow and can't be used for youtube.

The pi was easy to setup. There were literally no extra steps other than flashing my sd card with raspbian and running the ubeify install script.

With rock64
- wanted to do a custom install of debian (thought this was possible) but couldn't because bios wouldn't show up on hdmi without an os
- installed armbian image on to my sd card (debian 9)
- firefox behaves not much better than raspberry pi. youtube incredibly and not usable
- video incredibly choppy with vlc
- attempted to use ubeify (omxplayer) and performance much worse than my pi. Video stutters and stalls.


What gives? I thought the rock64 was a more powerful computer and could do what my pi did but better (i.e. so I could use firefox and vlc on it no sweat).
Also the rock64 runs hot too. The aluminum case feels warm vs the pi which seems to manage power better.

Thoughts? Suggestions? I know I'm not the first to attempt this, but finding information on how to get a lightweight computer for multimedia purposes hasn't given many useful results to me.

-ekg

Hi,

would you mind post the temperatures you Rock64 work with the aluminium case? I am interested on it but a bit scared about how warm it is.

Thanks.

I have a 1gb rock64 running nextcloud, plex media server, and RPI-Monitor, inside a closed cabinet with 2 1TB usb drives attached.  It's in a custom made plexiglass stack that's open on all sides and runs on average at 58C.  That is 20 degrees hotter than my Raspberry Pi 2 B running pihole, pivpn, and RPI-Monitor, but the Pi is on top of the cabinet just laying next to my router.  I have been more than pleased with the performance of my 2 rock64's(both 1gb), so much so that I have sold off my original pi 1 b, my zero w, and have listed my 3B on ebay.  When i sell my 3B i'll be getting another rock64 to run use as my pihole/pivpn server and then putting my 2B on ebay.  My raspberry pi's have been reliable and run without issues, however i can live with the rock64 running a little hotter than my pi's ran for the performance gains in regards to the usb3 port, the gig ethernet, and the faster ram.  My kodi box is faster, my nextcloud/plex server is faster, and if i ever get an internet connection faster than my current 100Mbs I expect my pivpn connections to be faster.  The PI is a great SBC, but the rock64 is better IMO.