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Rock64-Feature

There'southward a new competitor in boondocks for the Raspberry Pi three, and it may prove a amend fit for sure types of workloads. The Rock64 (sold by Pine64) is like to the RBP3 in several respects: Both fries use a Cortex-A53 CPU, though it's almost impossible to make up one's mind how loftier the Rock64 is actually clocked. The data isn't on the Wiki or site folio, and the only reference I could discover was buried in the actual manufacturer documentation, where it notes that the maximum clock speed of the Cortex-A53 quad is i.4GHz (the RBP3 runs at one.2GHz).

The GPU is a bit of a puzzle. TechRadar reports a Republic of mali-G450MP2 configuration, but Rock64'due south own documentation lists a Mali G450MP4. Either fashion, yous aren't going to be doing much in the way of high-end gaming on either solution, though nosotros've seen some interesting builds using the VideoCore IV inside the RPB for emulating early consoles.

ROCK64_board_side1

The gigabit ethernet, pair of USB 2.0 ports, and USB 3.0 port are visible here. The board'south ability supply is a carve up buy, much as with the RBP3.

Rock64 features not establish on the RBP3 include a USB 3.0 port, HDMI 2.0a, theoretical support for HDR10 and 4K video output, the pick to use eMMC storage, and a gigabit ethernet port. (The RBP3, on the other hand, includes wireless and Bluetooth support out of the box.) More RAM is also supported, up to 4GB, though this substantially raises the price, from $25 for 1GB of DRAM to $45 for 4GB of DRAM. Supported operating systems include Android 7.one, Debian, and Yocto, though the user community effectually the Rock64 chips is much smaller than its RBP equivalent.

Overall, the peripheral capabilities of the Rock64 are a bit more than advanced than its RBP3 analogue, fifty-fifty if the underlying CPU cores are the aforementioned. If the GPU is a Republic of mali-450MP4 it would probably be stronger every bit well (I'm a touch less certain virtually the Republic of mali-450MP2). Maximum clock speed on the GPU, for the curious, is 500MHz — again, it'southward non clear which clocks are actually beingness used.

ROCK64_board_side2
The 4K support question is also iffy. Technically, yes, in that location's decode support for codecs upward to and including that capability, but I'thou a piffling less sure on the ability of the relatively small-scale hardware to handle 4K video decode in H.264 or H.265. If anyone out there has an RBP3 or equivalent and wants to prove me wrong, please practise. But for at present, I wouldn't necessarily count on that option. Being able to technically handle output is ane matter; being able to practically do it is something birthday different.