Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison

the-diy-life.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 94 posts

Re: Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison

#21

Post by justinsaccount »

verginer wrote: post #12

I finally found a job for my Raspberry Pi 1 Model B from 2012. It’s been sitting in a drawer for years, but about a 2 years ago added it to my Tailscale network as an exit node. It’s a single-core 700MHz ARMv6 chip with 512MB of RAM. It's a fossil—a Pi 5 is 600x faster (according to the video). But for the 'low-bandwidth' task of routing some banking traffic or running a few changedetection watches via a Hetzner VPS…

I have a few older models lying around too, there's some other minor benefits as well:

  * They have full sized HDMI ports 
  * They will happily run using any random old USB charger and not overheat.

Re: Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison

#22

Post by moffkalast »

verginer wrote: post #12

I finally found a job for my Raspberry Pi 1 Model B from 2012. It’s been sitting in a drawer for years, but about a 2 years ago added it to my Tailscale network as an exit node. It’s a single-core 700MHz ARMv6 chip with 512MB of RAM. It's a fossil—a Pi 5 is 600x faster (according to the video). But for the 'low-bandwidth' task of routing some banking traffic or running a few changedetection watches via a Hetzner VPS…

Well on the other hand, at which point does it become wasteful to run something when it gets less and less power efficient compared to newer devices? According to OP's benchmarks, the Pi 1 burns 2W constant to do essentially zero work and running that on a more modern device that's already running would use almost no extra power.

Then again we use a kW or two to microwave things for minutes on a daily basis so who really gives a shit.

Re: Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison

#23

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

I think the Pi 3 range is a sweet spot for low cost, low power draw, decent-enough CPU. Newer models draw increasingly more power; going from 1.4W to 2.8W may not seem like much, but that's half your battery life. There's a few differences in Raspberry Pi 3 versions that may lead you to buy one or the other:

- The Pi 3B has 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11n (single-band) WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1. Power idled at 1.4W and peaked at 3.7W.

- The Pi 3B+ removed the 10/100 Ethernet in favor of USB Ethernet (~300Mbps w/USB2.0). CPU cores were overclocked from 1.2GHz to 1.4GHz (so a heatsink is more necessary), with ~15% increase in benchmark performance. It added 802.11ac (dual band) WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2 w/BLE. Power idled at 1.9W and peaked at 5.1W. This is also the only 3-model supporting PoE (w/ extra HAT).

- The Pi 3A+ removed Ethernet and reduced USB to a single port. The RAM was reduced from 1GB to 512MB. Power idled at 1.13W and peaked at 4.1W. The A+ form factor is more compact. Overall the 3A+ is smaller, cheaper, and less power draw than the 3B+ (but not as low as the 3B).

The lowest power draw with acceptable performance is the 3B. For slightly more power draw and more CPU performance, go with 3A+. For "everything" (including PoE) the 3B+ is it.

If you want the 3A+ but don't need the video, want a smaller form factor, and half the power draw, the Pi Zero 2 W is it. Though the Pi Zero 2 W is supposed to be cheapest, due to demand it's often sold out or more expensive. The 3A+ is still cheap (~$25) and available, with the downside of the higher power draw and larger form factor.

(disabling HDMI, LEDs, Wifi, Bluetooth, etc reduces power draw more. in testing, the 3A+ drew less power than the Zero 2 W with everything disabled. all of them draw ~0.1W when powered off)

Re: Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison

#24

Post by horsawlarway »

moffkalast wrote: post #22
verginer wrote: post #12

I finally found a job for my Raspberry Pi 1 Model B from 2012. It’s been sitting in a drawer for years, but about a 2 years ago added it to my Tailscale network as an exit node. It’s a single-core 700MHz ARMv6 chip with 512MB of RAM. It's a fossil—a Pi 5 is 600x faster (according to the video). But for the 'low-bandwidth' task of routing some banking traffic or running a few changedetection watches via a Hetzner VPS…

Well on the other hand, at which point does it become wasteful to run something when it gets less and less power efficient compared to newer devices? According to OP's benchmarks, the Pi 1 burns 2W constant to do essentially zero work and running that on a more modern device that's already running would use almost no extra power. Then again we use a kW or two to microwave things for minutes on a daily basis so who re…

Yeah... 2W is just not that much energy.

Enough energy to run that thing for an entire year in under 1/2 a gallon of gasoline.

When you can pretty easily offset the entire yearly energy use by skipping a mow of your yard once, or even just driving slightly more conservatively for a few days... I'm not so worried about the power use.

In my region - it's about $3.50 in yearly power costs.

Re: Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison

#25

Post by while_true_ »

For $50 you can pick up a used mini PC with say, i5-6500T and 8GB ram, that'll be much faster than the Pi 5. And it'll be compatible with all Linux distros. Really the Pi 3 is good enough as an edge device where you want to hook up things to the GPIO pins.

Re: Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison

#26

Post by geerlingguy »

deater wrote: post #5

you should try running Linpack on them all (you can find the results here mixed in with other machines I own) https://web.eece.maine.edu/~vweaver/group/machines.html When I did that on Pi3 when it first came out you could crash the system because the thermal throttling wasn't fast enough (the temp sensor was on the GPU not CPU). When I reported the issue on the pi forums the answer was essentially "why would anyone e…

I've been testing HPL on all my SBCs for years: https://sbc-reviews.jeffgeerling.com/reviews/results/

But still haven't gotten a full run on any Pi prior to the 4 B.

Re: Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison

#28

Post by bartread »

Do we think this page loads enough ads?

The graphs are interesting but, really, if you’re considering your readers rather than SEOing for last decade’s search engine technology, you should lead with them and discuss the findings afterwards.

I.e., get to the point quickly and then unpack the detail.

It’s interesting seeing where the incremental vs revolutionary improvements have occurred. CPU-wise, a huge leap with the 3 and then solid but steady improvement with 4 and 5. But the most meaningful jump in GPU performance seems to be 4 -> 5, and I’d be really interested in what that maybe opens up in terms of console emulation.

Anyway, fewers ads, please. Scanning through the article on mobile felt like playing hopscotch in a minefield.

Re: Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison

#29

Post by zikduruqe »

verginer wrote: post #12

I finally found a job for my Raspberry Pi 1 Model B from 2012. It’s been sitting in a drawer for years, but about a 2 years ago added it to my Tailscale network as an exit node. It’s a single-core 700MHz ARMv6 chip with 512MB of RAM. It's a fossil—a Pi 5 is 600x faster (according to the video). But for the 'low-bandwidth' task of routing some banking traffic or running a few changedetection watches via a Hetzner VPS…

As a fun weekend project in 2013, I stood up a weather station using Weewx and my RPI 2 with 1 GB RAM. I told myself if it ever crashes or the SD card gets corrupted, I'll just tear everything down.

Well, it's still running today on the original SD card. At noon today it processed its 1,055,425th record in the database.

Still, if it ever crashes, I'll just tear it down. :)

Re: Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison

#30

Post by tzs »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #23

I think the Pi 3 range is a sweet spot for low cost, low power draw, decent-enough CPU. Newer models draw increasingly more power; going from 1.4W to 2.8W may not seem like much, but that's half your battery life. There's a few differences in Raspberry Pi 3 versions that may lead you to buy one or the other: - The Pi 3B has 10/100 Ethernet, 802.11n (single-band) WiFi, Bluetooth 4.1. Power idled at 1.4W and peaked at…

> I think the Pi 3 range is a sweet spot for low cost, low power draw, decent-enough CPU. Newer models draw increasingly more power; going from 1.4W to 2.8W may not seem like much, but that's half your battery life.

Is that with the same load? The chart in the article shows a Pi 3 and Pi 4 using the same idle power, with the 4 drawing more under full load. But the 4 can do more at full load, raising the question of what would be the 4's power usage running a load equal to the 3's full load?

Post reply on HN