Rock Pi 4 vs Raspberry Pi 4

It’s inevitable, Raspberry Pi 4 is here. However, what Raspberry Pi 4 didn’t do right? The power supply. USB-C, but 5V 3.1A dumb adapter only. This is very dumb, you can’t use your handy smartphone charger is very dumb. Rock Pi 4 did that right with PD support.

As always, the storage options for Raspberry Pi 4 is a disappointment.

So its definitely no PD variable voltage input via a buck? Or do they just supply a 5v dumb adapter?

Looks like they’re only pre-order at this point.
Funny how they talk about the “open” broadcom videocore GPU, when the reality is that the driver is actually a firmware blob, just with an open sourced shim.

Edit: Still no onboard flash.
While it has 2 hdmi ports, they’re MICRO-HDMI, and from experience, micro-hdmi is really bad. They are extremely temperamental.
The USB-C port is just 2.0.

The only positive thing I see about it, is that they FINALLY offer 4G memory.

It has the same A72 cores but 20% lower clock comparing to Rock Pi 4.

The strength of Raspberry Pi 4 is still the strong community, not the hardware. I saw some aarch64 code checked into Raspbian repo about 10 days ago, so Raspbian may finally get 64 bit soon.

Maybe they’re not as hot? I’ve never seen anything make as much heat as a rockchip…

Most likely they are not that hot, because they are downcloaked as hell. From 2 Ghz to 1.5 Ghz. Same goes to GPU. It actually downcloaked from 500 Mhz to 400Mhz. And yes. Even with this downcloack you will have throttle problem

Just dumb adapter. Suprised they did not even cared to implement PD which is open standart.

I really like the Radxa but let’s face it, the overall performance of the RK3399 processors is far below the expectation, if in some applications Raspberry Pi 3 comes close to Rock Pi 4 that has an old 32bit architecture and DDR2 imagine now, the large developer community that Raspbeyy Pi has causes the processor to realize its full potential.

What I love about Rock Pi 4 is the M2 socket, but the new Raspberry is cheaper and depending on the performance maybe the result of a connected SSD on the USB 3.0 port can provide a good performance, as I told the developer community of them is gigantic At the end is the value of the product that defines acceptance.

If Radxa engages in good marketing strategy along with key resolutions and performance enhancement, Rock Pi 4 survives.
the total focus of Radxa now has to be on the Kernel is a more user friendly interface for beginners, otherwise it will be a painful death for the RK3399.

2 Likes

In what applications does a Pi3 come close to a RockPi4? Name some out of interest?

With USB 3.0 SSD the performance is much better than MicroSD but there are clear reasons why M.2 and Sata have huge preference over them.
Raspberry started with an education emphasis but now are purely Broadcom commercial orientated that use a false flag of education on a duped community.
I used to be a massive Raspberry fan but now see much of what they do as RS which is an acronym of its own right Raspberry Shit.
The proprietary RS of VC4 continues through the RS of VC6 and it will be the same hollow promises of VC4 opensource that will never transpire.
A huge army of contributors will graft on a project for Raspberry to capitalise and focus on its commercial activities and it really sickens me they do this under a banner of education.

There is a reason they have released the not until 2020 product just before the release of kernel 5.2 and the current model is a failure for the expectations of modern education.
The lack of PCIe through M.2 will have effect on the whole SBC market as it will not garner the plethora of focus the form factor standard sets.
The design is totally reactionary to the current Arm/Mali SBC offerings and rather than setting new scope for this arena, they have launched a blocking product rather than evolution.

The price is great but reading between the lines of how and why Raspberry have reacted and taking that as an indication on how they wish to proceed, its likely when the shininess of the Pi4 starts to dim quite a number of commentators for a number of reasons will not look so fondly on Raspberry mainly due to Broadcom.

I have a Pi4 on order because I am confused and bewildered how they are going to run a 4 core A72 with USB drive on 15watt max, its going to be interesting to see.
The focus for Radxa should be as it is keeping the best 4.4 kernel it can and leapfrogging the Pi to mainline and the latest LTS which will be likely 5.3.

There are always 2 sides to a story and this might be great for Rockchip users as we may see price reduction and 2020 is likely to bring on the RK3588 octacore 4xA76/4xA55 8nm with a MaliG52@8K with NPU.

The reason why the Pi4 has debuted early is an indication how strong other Arm/Mali SBC are right now and what is looking like a knee-jerk product might actually have opposite effect than you suggest.

I guess you replied to wrong person :slight_smile:
Btw, I do agree with you. This is what triggers me too

So if RK3588 gonna be released at 3rd quarter, that means we can only expect sbc with it in… I guess 6 month? rk3399 was released at april 2016 and first sbc with it was firefly that got released at December

Yeah dunno why you got the reply :slight_smile: was wondering that myself prob daydreaming in charge of a mouse :slight_smile:
I am extremely passionate about the low cost education market and just so much of what Raspberry say and provide doesn’t add up to a roadmap of their mission statement.
That really triggers me.

But I am not sure about the RBPi4 yet it could backfire.

Not sure about the RK3588 the RBPi4 will prob push the matter.
I am still excited about mainline with the RK3399 DRM / MESA / Panfrost which has hdmi audio & wifi/Bt missing in 5.2.
That will prob get backported rather than the wait for 5.3, but from 5.3 we should have almost as many distro choices as AMD64/X86 and it makes this one an interesting battle.

I think the RK3399 is the low end entry that hits the mark the RK3588 is quite a monster and guess its just about price and yeah could be 6 month prob longer and it will seem a long wait :slight_smile:

So why are you guys using the rockpi4 and not the rock960? Rock960 has the superior 96boards footprint and doesn’t perpetuate the broadpicomm “we are pretending that our blob GPU drivers are open source because we have an open source shim to our blob firmware” junk.

Note: schematics are near identical, same names on them, same names on the git commit… I think that radxa and vamrs are the same.

My first post, I confused the reply. :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

I agree with the gentlemen, in part, you are advanced users what the vast majority of people who consume RBPi are not, they want something practical and easy to use, the delay of the new Rockchip Kernel will harm sales, users more noobs will return to the RBPi.
Here in Brazil the vast majority of people buy games and media center, RBPi just like all other SBCs are used for entertainment.
Most schools that have electronics in the curriculum base use Arduino, the RBPi is not used for its higher price which is considered high for students.

The minimum wage here is R $ 970 a RPi3 costs R $ 160 without taxes that arrives here illegally, the RRPi3 that is manufactured here and distributed legally costs R $ 269 represents 27% of a minimum wage, in order to use the GPIO and run the risk of burning in a class.
That’s why the arduino is unbeatable, the price is the boss.

From what I know here in South America, the only way to heighten acceptance of RK3399 is with Panfrost, but the 6-month delay will be difficult for Rockchip-based SBCs.
On the performance of RBPi3 just see the performace graphs, a processor with 32 bits in several moments comes close to the RK3399 one imagines with this new Pi4.

Brazilian RBPi3 :see_no_evil:

Got mine as having the same footprint and a common form factor is important, the the images avail and community seemed pretty quiet.

The footprint and offering via the Rockpi4 is pretty much perfect to what I envisaged, I don’t actually like the 96boards :).

The only difference in the “images” is a couple of lines of dts. They’ll actually boot each other’s images.

There is very little difference in speed between 32bit & 64bit generally and the Pi2&3 are 64bit CPUs just running the only available 32bit Raspbian because of VC4 most likely.

There is no 6 month delay either as early July 5.2 is released as its scheduled.
Arduino cater for electronic minded and a niche selection Raspberry had the economies of sale and still do, to bring an entry level desktop to the masses that is extendible.
Raspberry have failed with a product that competes with its existing products, there is not just a single Pi and from $5 to $65 there is a range of Pis to choose from.
Unfortunately rather than expand they chose to create a blocking product and now also have a restricted offering to all.

Its a shame and cynical to how much they emphasis there educational aspect, but hey unlike you I am no longer a raspberry fan.

You do not understand my point, I’m not a fan of RBPi I stopped using it so my rock pi 4 arrived, but everything I said was referring to the great mass of users, they have no technical knowledge, they want simplicity of use and ease to follow a simple tutorial, at this point the RBPi has advantages.
A usability example for novice users is the (NOOBS Lite
Network install) only from raspberrypi.org/downloads
Things to type attracts many novice users, I see several channels on youtube of children who have learned to install the OS without help from third parties or without reading extensive user manuals.

I really don’t see any distinction between the rk3399 (be it rockpi4 or rock960) and rpi in terms of installation. In ALL cases, you dd a file onto an sdcard, plug it in, and switch it on.

Please elaborate, if you know of any additional complexity that I’m not aware of.

The problem is not with me but with a user who has never used a CBS or the user who is only interested in using a CBS as entertainment, try giving a Rock Pi 4 and a RASPI3 to a 12 year old.
It will use what has more tutorials easy to follow, a RASPI with NOOBS it has everything it needs in an OS to study or with an emulator with ISO ready full of games, a RK3399 still has a series of challenges to overcome, incompatibliladade with a serious SSD M2, connection problem missing from a dedicated friendly menu to configure keyboard, Bluetooth network and etc, for everything in a RK3399 you need to enter the console and enter some commands to solve.
That scares new users.

I am forced to disagree. A kid is going to be able to install the ANDROID image to rk3399 and poke around with a mouse or touchscreen, or whatever. Most kids probably already have an android tablet and/or phone, so they already know how to use it. No console required.

As for the SSD M2… sure, I’ll grant you that, but only because rpi doesn’t HAVE one.