State of the Raspberry Pi and relevant distros in light of the new 8gb model

[fox]

There is a good article here that talks about the new 8gb option, what kinds of uses might benefit from the extra 4gb, the current state of Raspbian, and the current state of software that would allow the rPi to boot directly from a USB drive. In a nutshell, Raspbian is still a 32 bit distro with the 64 bit version in beta, and the beta still lacks hardware video acceleration in VLC or Chromium. One can access all 8gb of RAM in a 32 bit distro, but not in one single process. With regard to USB booting, the article notes:

Last week, Raspberry Pi launched a beta firmware update that enables booting files and software via USB. The USB bootloader avoids the need to bootstrap an SD card for storage. Users with the USB 3.0-equipped Raspberry Pi 4 can gain better performance from booting from USB.

A TechRepublic report quotes Upton as saying that while SD card performance was boosted by a factor of two on the Raspberry Pi 4, USB performance improved by a factor of 10. “So you’re getting 4Gbit/s, in theory, over that link, and that makes it a very good way of attaching storage,” Upton told TechRepublic.

Prior to the release, RPi 4 users could already use a USB drive as storage, but it required bootstrapping an SD card. Considering all the warnings about beta level hazards, you may want to continue to do so for a while. The official release is coming soon.

[Jason]

There is a good article here that talks about the new 8gb option, what kinds of uses might benefit from the extra 4gb, the current state of Raspbian, and the current state of software that would allow the rPi to boot directly from a USB drive. In a nutshell, Raspbian is still a 32 bit distro with the 64 bit version in beta, and the beta still lacks hardware video acceleration in VLC or Chromium. One can access all 8gb of RAM in a 32 bit distro, but not in one single process. With regard to USB booting, the article notes:

Enlightening article; thanks for sharing. Using my Pi 3, I think I tried VLC player and didn't notice any hiccups. But I only tried it at 720 because I rushed to find a file and could only find one of that resolution on the fly. I do remember trying YouTube in Chromium and it mostly ran decently 1080 with some occasional lag and dropped frames. It ran videos great at 720. So I'm not sure how much the hardware video acceleration matters except in intensive video operations, perhaps games, animation work and making use of dual monitors. I'm not sure why they didn't note those other applications or uses as well. Although they noted its use a server, they didn't specifically mention video streaming specifically which would make use of more RAM and the video acceleration. I suppose I can let them off because the author did say, "demanding desktop replacement applications should also benefit."

I did notice that it says it no longer shares RAM with the NPU, which is the numerical processing unit, like a mini-CPU for doing mathematical operations. That's not for spreadsheets or other simple calculations unless they're statistical functions or use spreadsheets doing operations. That's used for intensive 3D work, especially for generation of 3D objects as you move around them (e.g. 3D video games and animation).

Regarding the extra memory and 64-bit, I think I mentioned that you need double the usual RAM with a 64-bit OS. Probably not a big deal for just running the OS and a couple of 64-bit applications but will rapidly add up.

[fox]

The USB booting function really interests me when the beta is released. USB booting from an external SSD is pretty fast when you have USB 3 ports. That alone would make me interested in the rPi4 over my current 3B. Though truthfully, I haven't really touched the potential of the 3B I have for other than trying it as a desktop, and I don't really need that.

[Jason]

The USB booting function really interests me when the beta is released. USB booting from an external SSD is pretty fast when you have USB 3 ports. That alone would make me interested in the rPi4 over my current 3B. Though truthfully, I haven't really touched the potential of the 3B I have for other than trying it as a desktop, and I don't really need that.

I never thought about that. Can USB 3.x keep up with a SATA drive without bottle-necking?  Why do you need it for? I think that would help you decide what to do.

[fox]

I have run distros on my 2015 iMac that were stored on USB 3 SSD external drives. They run pretty well, even though USB 3 is slower than the internal SATA connection. It's fast enough, and it would be much faster than running a distro from an SD card. For that matter, even if you had to boot from an SD card but your apps were on a USB 3 external SSD, you would definitely notice the difference. On that basis alone, an rPi4 would be markedly faster than an rPi3. But that might only matter if you were using it as a desktop machine, as opposed to, say, a server.