RaspberryPi Slow AF

[Kartik Chopra]

I'll be honest this is a vent post.

I bought a raspberry pi 4, flashed my SD card and thought I was off to the races of exploring linux and SBCs.

Truth be told the Rpi 4 is utter garbage imo. It's slow AF, unresponsive at best and this is all after overclocking the thing.

 

If anyone can give me 1 good reason to buy a Rpi over a used desktop/laptop I'll be amazed.

 

I have the rpi and a used prodesk 600 (i5 8500T) on the same desk I bought for almost the same price. People keep complaining the T versions of intel processors are bad but they haven't seen rpi yet.

 

To anyone reading this thinking of buying a rpi 4, 5 (or the keyboard 400 and 500 versions), STOP, DON'T.

save youself some headache, time, money and sanity and just buy a used computer. 

 

THERE IS NOT A SINGLE PROJECT THE USED COMPUTER WON'T BE BETTER AT.

[AndrewAsd]

A raspberry pi isn't meant to be a desktop computer replacement. It's typically used for it's compactness and GPIO cabalities with other electronics. It's plenty fast for what it's actually meant to be used for and pretty solid overall for some emulation as well. And there's no point in comparing it to a used product that's not being manufactured anymore. 

[Kilrah]

It's also extremely heavily dependent on what SD card you use for obvious reasons, it's its main storage. A slow SD card can make it 10 times slower than what it's actually capable of.

 

But yeah the 4 was a stretch for desktop use, the 5 is a lot more viable. 

 

13 minutes ago, Kartik Chopra said:

THERE IS NOT A SINGLE PROJECT THE USED COMPUTER WON'T BE BETTER AT.

Plenty of stuff that doesn't involve a desktop and direct interatction, and/or that make use of the GPIO and other interfaces.

[Ha-Satan]

Yeah, I've found that most of the outlets that cover SBCs (like Jeff Geerling and Explaining Computers) have a tendency to over-state their capabilities as end-user desktop computing devices for use with a GUI. In reality only the newest and most advanced SBCs (like the Raspberry Pi 5 with 8 or 16GB of RAM, or similarly-specced competitors) can actually be used with the modern Internet in a way that is functional. You're absolutely right that if you want to get a cheap computer for typical desktop PC tasks, you're better off getting a used X86 machine.

 

But as @AndrewAsd noted, RPis and other SBCs aren't really intended to be a desktop replacement; at least, that's not their primary target use case. They're designed to be low-power-draw control boards for embedded systems and robotics projects using the GPIO header. Alternatively, they can work well as servers presuming that your use case doesn't require a lot of CPU or RAM (such as a basic file server, Home Assistant server, or web server). I have the base model RPi4 with only 2GB of RAM and it works just fine as a web server.

 

There is more to the computing world than just desktop PCs and laptops lol

[GarlicDeliverySystem]

9 minutes ago, Kartik Chopra said:

I have the rpi and a used prodesk 600 (i5 8500T) on the same desk I bought for almost the same price. People keep complaining the T versions of intel processors are bad but they haven't seen rpi yet.

The Pi 4 was released 6 years ago and was kinda slow even then. It was never designed as a laptop or desktop replacement, it is my understanding it was intended as a teaching tool for things like embedded systems, projects requiring GPIO or simply a very cheap, small and efficient computer. 

 

You could buy a new Pi4 already for 35$ at release, and while you might be able to get a Prodesk 600 used for that money now, on release they were definitely an order of magnitude more expensive.

 

15 minutes ago, Kartik Chopra said:

If anyone can give me 1 good reason to buy a Rpi over a used desktop/laptop I'll be amazed.

Simple: it is new and totally sufficient for the intended task. We have it as controllers in some scientific equipment made by smaller companies. Way cheaper than full embedded systems and even after years you can find them for cheap. Many university projects I have heard of or home-grown stuff just used a pi because they needed something to run their code on, but not nearly as much compute power as would be in a random used PC. 

[Kartik Chopra]

@AndrewAsd I'm interested to learn more.

Let's keep cost aside for this because where I'm from a rpi 4 will cost the same as a mini pc with 3rd or 4th gen Intel (the prodesk 600 mini pc with 8th gen cost me 12k inr and rpi costed me ~6k).

What can an rpi do that the PC can't / do better? The answer may be it's more efficient but at 35w max power draw for T series intel chips I don't think its an issue.

And what environment are we talki g here, industrial, personal?

[Ha-Satan]

3 minutes ago, Kartik Chopra said:

What can an rpi do that the PC can't / do better? The answer may be it's more efficient but at 35w max power draw for T series intel chips I don't think its an issue.

The biggest thing you are missing about the Pi (and many other SBCs) is the presence of the general purpose input/output (GPIO) pins. These are programmable pins that allow the Pi to control other equipment, so you can use it to make all kinds of robots, IoT hardware, or any number of other things. Typical desktop PCs do not have these general purpose output pins (and they are usually much bigger as well).

 

For example:

 

 

 

[Kartik Chopra]

Thanks all

In all posts I've only heard the main advantage of it is interfacing with electronics via GPIO pins. Let me experiment with what I can do with these.

Let me also experiment with installing a lite GUI less linux distro. Suggestions for this will help

[Ha-Satan]

 

[Ha-Satan]

Just now, Kartik Chopra said:

Let me also experiment with installing a lite GUI less linux distro. Suggestions for this will help

Honestly regular Raspberry Pi OS works just fine as a CLI-only operating system. You just need to run raspi-config from the command line and then select the option to boot into the CLI mode.

[Needfuldoer]

Yup, that's the Raspberry Pi!

 

You pick them for their form factor and GPIO pins, not necessarily for their performance as computers.

[manikyath]

if you're worried about speed, the pi is not for you.

 

realisticly, the pi and similar boards are useful for:

- embedded applications / stuff where the gpio is important, and realisticly speed is not a concern. we actually have a raspberry pi deployed at work specificly to talk to a CAN module to turn on E-bike batteries for testing. it's operated trough the official pi touch screen, and powered off one of the official power supplies. in theory this could all be ran from the pc we have there for the testers anyways.. but in practisce having a little "self-contained device" just makes more sense.

- if you "just need a display out" and space is at a premium. displays showing helpdesk stats in offices, cycling menu displays in takeout places, etc.

- if you need the device to be small/pocketable. i've had a pi3B+ in use as an emulation box for family gatherings for a year or two. i cant bring a desktop, but a pi in an enclosure with a fan with a mild OC will run a bunch of console emulators, and fit in my backpack. just plugged into power and HDMI and ready to game.

 

additionally.. if your software isnt properly ported to ARM, it's gonna run like ass. there's some hilareous examples of 2D games running like powerpoint presentations, while the platform is plenty capable of 3D graphics. i've had a java based chat app take half an hour to load on a little pi based media box, while it ran games just fine, even while the java heap of junk was still loading.