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NicoD

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  1. Like
    NicoD got a reaction from lanefu in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    I've got a very special use case that I don't think anybody else uses it for. I use them (among many other things) to edit and render videos on location(while traveling, while visiting interesting stuff...)
    I must do this with power banks charged with solar panels. So for that reason ARM is the best choice(power efficient). I've got my "render bread box" for a long time with the C2(fastest while best passive cooled) for editing and rendering. The RPi2B with small display to record sound(because it's most power efficient). And I also just love sbc's...

    I'm now putting together something better with a 13" 5V display and probably with the RockPi4B for this summer. The case will need to be the cooling for it. I've got more solar panels, so I can power more.
    And I hope in the future to be able to make a new more powerful handheld sbc with the Pine H64.(if it's ever released, I've seen TL Lim on FOSDEM and he said it would be out first half of Februari) Video Pine64@FOSDEM

    Since I couldn't get the right info for my use case(because nobody else uses it like this) I filmed some tests when I bought the Tinker Board and put it on Youtube. That video got a few thousand views. So I just kept making videos about new boards.
    I try to do this a good as I can. That's why I love it when somebody comes with information I didn't know about what you often do.

    Many people get their info on Youtube, it is mostly another public then we meet here in the Armbian forum, that uses SBC's for other tasks(gaming, desktop use). So that's what I show.
     
    I'll follow it. Thanks for the info.
     
    But that's what people want. They want to see them lined up in an order. So it's the reviewer his choice what order he shows to the viewers/readers. That's why I try to find the better tools for the job, but none of those I've used are even near to perfect.(as I've shown in my videos) So I try to minimise the variables as much as possible by using the same distro, no throttlin, the same software version, the same settings, only ARMV7->V7 - V8->V8 ... But it's never possible to do this well. Most Youtubers don't even care about that, and show very weird results of sysbench or so.
    I'll keep using 7zip, CPUMiner and blender for now because even with their faults. They still manage to make the most sensible line up. And I'll keep saying it only shows how well it does that task only. And there's a lot more to SBC's than how powerful the CPU is.
    Well the last 2 days we've managed to keep you bussy here. And I enjoyed it, and I bet many readers will have too. So it's only a tiny step to stay and end the self-censorship.
    Have a great day. Read you soon.
  2. Like
    NicoD reacted to TonyMac32 in Advice on new SBC device   
    I can't help but think this will be a cyclical issue for that community then, he is far too sentimental (tunnel vision perhaps), and the platform is far too closed hardware wise.  Typical market forces will render them noncompetitive over and over as they cling to the familiar.
     
    As always, the "open source platform" would be on a non-distributor SoC with a most likely closed source VC5, with all the typical paywalls up to be "permitted" to use the HEVC/etc.  Since Eben was willing to hide his camera tuning behind DRM on the VC4 devices, I can only imagine the uses for the improved security core... 
     
    Again, not a problem, except they sit their in their tiny little hardware sandcastle with the tide coming in and claim to build unquestionably superior supercomputers.
     
     
    I was a lot less sarcastic on this topic before I started reading their forums and seeing the excuses they give for basic lacking functionality, the technical 1/4 truths, some outright deception, hiding behind "millions sold" numbers instead of engaging technical questions...  The GbE one was too much, their assertion was that achieving 30% Gb throughput was irrelevant since it was attached to the network at GbE bit rates.  That's like me putting 300 kph rated tires on a Lada Riva and claiming to compete with Ferrari because the physical contact between the car and the street was capable of high speed operation...  (to be fair, the Lada may be more reliable than a Ferrari...  )
  3. Like
    NicoD reacted to chwe in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    if I would speak for others I wouldn't write I.. right?
     
    well, most of my serious work depends on windows, ergo depends on a flawlessly working x86 machine.. software support for the tools I need is nowhere either on arm and/or linux (something simple as a chemical structure editor which fulfills my needs simple doesn't exist on linux and I'm not a masochist using the few structure editors available which are open-source).
     
    Or you calculate some statistics without meaning to let it look like a professional..
     
    If I'm not completely wrong it should be:
    x_mean = 01:07:27.56 (+-6s)
    std. deviation = 24s
     
    Assuming it's a Gaussian type distribution. Or otherwise called: the easy way to look results more trustfully even if there's absolutely no reason to do so!
  4. Like
    NicoD reacted to rooted in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    I have the means to see power usage, as time and situation permits I will test this as well.
     
    Thanks for the kind words.
  5. Like
    NicoD got a reaction from rooted in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    You, @chwe the people
    I do watch a lot of benchmarking on Youtube pure out of entertainment. I love Gamers Nexus on Youtube. I don't care a bit about x86 hardware. I'm not planning to buy anything new. But it seems to have an entertainment value that I like.
     
    Indeed, a lot of people who are new to SBC's. So I try to keep it as simple as possible, and show how to set up everything for a new user, and what's the best OS available, gaming, video playback, energy consumption, ease of use, ... My viewers seem happy, I almost never get bad comments. I many times get the comment that I've saved them days of searching. So that's what I keep doing.
    I try to test as much as possible, and only when I don't know anymore what more to test I make my videos.
    Most other sbc reviewers on Youtube make their video after only a few hours of working with them. That's where I try to be different. That also means my videos are later than the more popular Youtubers.(ETAPrime can't even install a simple Linux distro on an sbc, and he's got +200 000 subscribers)
    I now get boards for free, and I share my findings with the board makers. FriendlyElec and Radxa have done a lot with my data for the M4 and RockPi4B. I'm happy with that. Other makers don't seem to care as much.
    I also don't make a video as long as a novice user can't use a board easily and well.
     
     
    I've done a lot more of them with the RK3399. When settings haven't changed Blender has very little changes when done multiple times. (I'll do 3 now with the M4)
    Ignore gimp, gtkperf and sysbench. That was just to show you're nothing with that.
    I don't think the Rock Pi 4B had CONFIG_HZ=250 but HZ=1000. The NanoPi M4 now did 5minutes better than the RPi4B with HZ=250 at the same clockspeed. So my assumption that the RockPi4B was faster because of faster ram is untrue.  Still need to do more with the RockPi4B. I'm waiting for the Armbian images to mature.
    Rock Pi 4B |SBC bench result |CPU Miner |7-zip s/c |7-zip b/c |7-zip multi avg. of 3 |Blender |GIMP |GTKPerf |Sysbench Ubuntu http://ix.io/1uVr 9.50kH/s 1242 1818 7802 1h17m22s NanoPi M4 |SBC bench result |CPU Miner |7-zip s/c |7-zip b/c |7-zip multi avg. of 3 |Blender |GIMP |GTKPerf |Sysbench Armbian bionic hz1000 http://ix.io/1nLh 10.23kH/s 1335 2005 8352 1h13m50s 0m29s5 5.06s 26763 CONFIG_HZ=250 http://ix.io/1BLW 10.45kH/s 1335 2007 8320 1h08m28s Armbionic@1.4/1.8 hz250 1253 1828 7821 1h12m52s Armbian bionic nightly http://ix.io/1pDo 10.24kH/s 1329 1990 8292 1h13m28s 0m29s 5.12s 26733 Armbian stretch desktop http://ix.io/1odF 8.66kH/s 1350 1977 8400 1h14m12s 0m31s 5.24s 3.1s Armbian stretch dsk nightly //ix.io/1pM0 8.80kH/s 1359 1993 8500 1h15m04s 0m31s 5.32s 3.3s Armbian stretch core no fan //ix.io/1pKU 8.80-8.65kH/s 1353 1989 8461 Armbian stretch core //ix.io/1pL9 8.76kH/s 1354 1988 8456 Armbian stretch core nightly //ix.io/1pLf 8.82kH/s 1357 1994 8494 Lubuntu Bionic arm64 http://ix.io/1oGJ 9.24kH/s CPU Miner 1056 1551 6943 1h28m13s Lubuntu Bionic armhf http://ix.io/1pJ1 1111 1769 7705 2h02m54s 0m57s 6.97s 1666 32-bit Lubuntu Xenial armhf http://ix.io/1oCb 989 1507 6339 2h20m51s 0m59s 49.77s 49.7s 32-bit  
     
    Of course @tkaiser has a lot more knowledge than me, and I'd rather see someone like him making good videos to well inform people. As long as that doesn't happen, there's still a place for me on Youtube (TKaiser, the Derbauer of SBC's??)
    I don't think he'll ever aprove using Blender, but I also use SBC-Bench. I don't think there's much to say against that. 
    Blender does have a few advantages for me. It shows if a system is stable(crashed if not), it takes a long time so I can see the heat characteristics, it uses close to 100% of all cores(7zip doesn't, and this differs a lot from board to board, distro to distro). But small changes can effect the performance a lot.

    @rooted I'm also interested in seeing how the H2 does against the N2. Also power consumption while maxed out interests me in both. Until now the NanoPC T3+ has the lead in horsepower per watt for me(I need to retest that with HZ=250 too). I think the N2 can beat it.
    But time enough for that. Take good care of each other. May everything be well and safe for your son.
     
    That's a nice filosofy to live by, but we don't have faith in our own hands. Health is something we can only be thankful for having it.


     
  6. Like
    NicoD reacted to chwe in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    I'm not sure on this one.. I seriously don't read many benchmarks.. I bought my notebook without looking at any benchmark.. I decided against another one cause it's a known not properly working one on linux.. I had a few other requirements which a bunch of them didn't fulfill (e.g. browsers are ram hungry and no way in heaven I go back to a 8gb ram one).. Whats about showing how a random board with the current available OS's perform on the use-cases you and others might have? E.g. lightweight desktop scenarios etc.
    Personally, I think benchmarking makes sense to compare the same board with various distros or find bottlenecks.. e.g. is my SBC capable of saturating a GbE link with encrypted storage.. and when not why? Can this part be improved or not? If I've a desktop usage in mind should I use a Debian, an Ubuntu or might something like a Arch or Gentoo be the better option. For sure this is difficult due to Linux on Arm (especially in desktop scenarios, except android) is nowhere compared to x86 world.
     
    This approach doesn't benchmark the max. performance a *random SoC* is capable to deliver (and should also not be sold as such) but instead it represents the current state of what you can expect by buying random product. The majority of users don't spend as much time as some of us do to tweak settings. Such 'benchmarks' have then to be repeated over time to see if *random distribution for random board* improves or not. A board might be badly supported in the beginnings but hopefully they get it and pick up such tweaks so that it gets better over time. As a customer of a board I'm interested that the board producer makes my board better over time (e.g. as a beginner I would never buy a xunlong board, cause they're notoriously known to provide no support at all for their SBCs - the whole story differs as a more experienced guy, I can fix some flaws of a OPi as long as they're only software wise). But you target audience is more the end-user side right? So it might be interesting for them what they can expect by buying *random board* from *random boardmaker*.
     
    This approach differs from @tkaiser benchmarking. He tries to benchmark the hardware and tweaks settings to ensure that the software impact is as marginal as it can be. Don't get me wrong, this is important as well, but as long as I don't have a distro which delivers those tweaks in their stock Images, I can't benefit from a powerful SoC (e.g. if thermal settings are badly on every distro for a random board I can't benefit from better settings as a end-user). Somehow the same counts for the blender benchmark:
    How often did you run those tests? Roughly 25% looks indeed like a real difference but I would prefer to have at least a triplicate to get a clue how much error margin I expect for such a test. I'm quite sure you'll still see a difference but the dataset locks not complete (e.g. 'RockPro64, Ubuntu Cosmic with LXDE, 2.0/1.5GHz, CONFIG_HZ=1000: 1:01:11' is missing). So you could twice see a difference between config_hz and twice a difference between cosmic and bionic. By a triplicate with an error margin you could also show that those numbers are somehow reliable (my current work outside SBCs has error margins of ~30-100%, means I run a lot of triplicates to ensure that there's a real difference before I get excited about something).
     
    This isn't grass root benchmarking, it's more a treetops benchmarking and it should also be sold as such. Means that you've to be honest to your viewers that such numbers can change if distributions tweaks their settings and you can elaborate why a board-distribution combination might perform worse compared to another combination.
  7. Like
    NicoD reacted to chwe in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    The concept of 'alternative facts' isn't it?
     
    Sine I'm barely interested in benchmarks I didn't even read the whole benchmarking tests from odroid (https://www.hardkernel.com/blog-2/odroid-n2/).. But a few things which are for sure misleading.
     

    a graphical trick which is quite often used by populists to make a thing bigger than it is.. There are only a very few cases where a graph shouldn't go thorough zero as a nomination.. If we do so here:

    the whole story looks different.. doesn't it? (using 3d-ish plots for 2d data is also useless, but different story.)
     
    Besides the benchmarking which is somehow boring for me.. I still think about use-case for this board.. Lightweight desktop replacement? TV-box on linux? Or 'cluster like' replacement? For the first I would prefer to have at least on USB on the other side, for the second I don't care cause not my field and for the third others may comment on this. Btw. the same counts for this graph:

    which would better be summarized in a table not a graph..
     
  8. Like
    NicoD got a reaction from TonyMac32 in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    Take good care of him. More important than an sbc. Greetings.
  9. Like
    NicoD got a reaction from rooted in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    Take good care of him. More important than an sbc. Greetings.
  10. Like
    NicoD reacted to tkaiser in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    There's a lot more. I just updated my post above with GCC 8.2 results. When Blender is built with a more recent compiler rendering gets faster (this is one of the many reasons why this Phoronix stuff is so bad -- Michael Larabel doesn't educate his users about such basics but throws a bunch of meaningless numbers and graphs at them to create the impression benchmarking would be something magic).
     
    And if you build Blender from source with appropriate compiler flags (not those ultra conservative distro defaults, especially not with 'stable' distros like Debian and Ubuntu) then it will be even faster.
     
     
    Very unlikely. And performance is already known, check sbc-results for PineH64 (board vendors don't matter, it's only about the SoC in question). And of course settings matter. If you use one of those crappy Xunlong images there's no need to test further since they're known for using crappy Allwinner defaults that suck.
  11. Like
    NicoD reacted to tkaiser in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    'Around for a long time'? The point is not since when settings exist but what the defaults are and why people interested in maximum performance should care about such settings. This was the context:
     
     
    And by looking at both tinymembench and Blender scores it should be pretty obvious that this makes a difference for workloads that utilize CPU cores fully... just to explain why comparing RK3399 and S922X benchmark scores doesn't make that much sense as long as such essential stuff is not also considered.
     
    @NicoD: I explained in my former post how to check for such settings, simply check the spoiler.
  12. Like
    NicoD reacted to tkaiser in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    Blender test. Checking the relevance of SETTINGS instead of focusing on irrelevant hardware details like DDR3 vs. DDR4:
    RockPro64, Ubuntu Bionic with LXDE, 2.0/1.5GHz, CONFIG_HZ=1000: 1:15:31 RockPro64, Ubuntu Bionic with LXDE, 2.0/1.5GHz, CONFIG_HZ=250: 1:06:59 RockPro64, Ubuntu Cosmic with LXDE, 2.0/1.5GHz, CONFIG_HZ=250: 1:01:11  
    That's 8:30 minutes difference due to switching from CONFIG_HZ=1000 to CONFIG_HZ=250. Check %sys vs. %user below (iostat 60 output). And why is Cosmic faster than Bionic if it's exactly same Blender version? Since Cosmic (18.10) uses GCC 8.2 while Bionic (18.04) uses GCC 7.3 to build the packages. So by switching from default SoC vendor kernel settings to something better and by letting modern compilers do their job we get almost 25% performance 'for free'.
     
  13. Like
    NicoD reacted to tkaiser in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    Same with S922X, simply check @rooted's sbc-bench results (where even the cpufreq OPP are checked and confirmed). The problem is not thermal but reliability/undervoltage due to the firmware running on the Cortex-M3 controlling DVFS which can be clearly seen by running the most heavy load called cpuminer. 
     
    Quoting myself: ''Overclocked' executions with both CPU clusters set to 2.0 GHz showed reliability issues most probably due to DVFS undervoltage (cpuminer quit almost immediately here while it ran only 50 seconds there -- this tool since being a load generator checking for data corruption can also be used for reliability testing but I would prefer our StabilityTester instead)'
     
    I already suggested to Justin and Dongjin to take our StabilityTester approach to provide N2 users with an easy way to check for undervoltage/instabilities since a lot of those users will activate the 'overclocking' settings (most probably these are undervolting settings at the same time based on results) and then end up with silent data corruption and/or crashes (all the great results of trying to get laughable 7%-8% performance gain almost nobody is able to notice).
     
     
    Simply do a web search for CONFIG_HZ
  14. Like
    NicoD reacted to rooted in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    Test for yourselves, Hardkernel has 4 N2 on the bench ready for testing.
     
    https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?p=246987#p246987
    @tkaiser
    I will build the kernel with 1000hz enabled soon and run sbc-bench again.
  15. Like
    NicoD got a reaction from rooted in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    Blender results BMW render @ 1080p
    Odroid N2 @ 1.9Ghz-1.8Ghz                             Bionic     50m28s
    NanoPC T3+ @ 8x1.4Ghz               Armbian      Bionic 1h10m25s
    The NanoPi M4 @ 1.5Ghz-2Ghz    Armbian       Bionic 1h13m28s
                                  1.4Ghz-1.8Ghz FriendlyElec Bionic  1h28m13s
    RockPi 4B @ 1.4Ghz-1.8Ghz                              Bionic 1h17m22s
    Odroid C2 @ 1.75Ghz 1104Mhz ram                Bionic 2h10m21s
                          1.5Ghz   912Mhz ram                  Bionic 2h35m10s
    Rock64 @ 1.5Ghz                                             Bionic 2h55m56s

    The difference is huge. The N2 is in a league of it's own here.
    You can only compare 64-bit with 64-bit OS's with Blender. And Stretch performs a bit worse than Bionic.
    7zip is an ok test for cpu only. Blender is good to see the performance for most daily use(cpu+ram).
  16. Like
    NicoD reacted to rooted in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    It accepts 7.5V ~ 20V according to the specs, powering with a battery pack shouldn't be an issue
     
    This range makes it perfect for automotive use, such as a CarPC.
  17. Like
    NicoD got a reaction from nachoparker in Support of Raspberry Pi   
    A good read.
    I've learned something. I didn't know the ethernet and usb share the same line. The thing is even crappier than I thought.
    I would also have complained (a lot) about their ancient ddr2 RAM chips. I find this the biggest flaw in the design of the 3B+. The SoC is so bottlenecked by this that even at OC of 1.5Ghz, it performs very badly on ram dependend tasks. 

    The thing is just one collection of design flaws. I don't know what was going on while they were designing the 3B/3B+. They were clearly not concentrating on their work.
    Either they don't have good testers, or they just don't listen to their concerns. All these issues should have been fixed after the first tests.

    I still love my 2B, and still use it often. That's got advantages towards other sbc's(power efficient, no throttling, much more stable, ...) I still hope they're going to do better with the next one. But for now I'm going to use my RK3399's and dream of the Odroid N2.
    Great job, thanks.
  18. Like
    NicoD reacted to rooted in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    I would run it NicoD but the device is headless currently, when I get around to installing the necessary packages to get the UI up I can render the scene and give you the statistics.

    I'm running sbc-bench with the cores mildly overclocked, will post those results when finished.
  19. Like
    NicoD reacted to chwe in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    just highlight thomas here, maybe he reads it..   @tkaiser
  20. Like
    NicoD reacted to rooted in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    It's my N2, it's not using a fan.

    Ambient temperature is 22.7° C
  21. Like
    NicoD reacted to chwe in Daily (tech related) news diet   
    huh.. that wasn't addressed to you.. more to the politicians I quoted in my starter.. not that you get me wrong on this one..
     
    well, they might sold less discs.. Production cost for studio etc. are still here.. but the whole music industry was a way to late to get the money out.. Now spotify and apple music gets a large amount of it.. It's not that they didn't saw it.. Napster was a clear signal that they should find a way to deliver their content and make some money out of it..
     
    well that's a difficult crippled topic.. I worked in pharma for several years and currently doing pharma related research at university ergo govt. funded. Not everything there is govt. funded, pharma companies also spend a huge amount into research.. This might be a good one if you want to dive into this topic ( @martinayotte, didn't even know that your country has pharma... ): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5848527/
    I'm not willing to nail down this fully, it's a way too much to consider to 'get the big picture'.. Pharma related research is unbelievable expensive.. Rule of thumb, if a device can be used for pharma related research it's roughly 10x the price you would expect.. The actual production costs of a drug is quite often only a small fraction of the price you pay for it.. The majority goes into other channels, including research, customer promotion and also a bigger amount into dividends - just look how much dividends a pharma-company pays yearly to its shareholders, you wouldn't expect it..
     
    Not cause I would prefer an open knowledge world everyone has to agree on my opinion.. People should be free to choose a closed environment if they want..
  22. Like
    NicoD got a reaction from rooted in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    Thank you for that. It seems like I thought it would be. Quite a bit faster than the NanoPi M4 @ 1.5-2Ghz, but no giant step. Temperatures seem very good, I wonder if they're using a fan. 52°C for cpu miner at 100% is good.
    In CPU-Miner it even beats the octa-core NanoPC T3+. This uses 100% of all cores. 
    In 7-zip it does a bit worse than the NanoPC T3+. (Only decompression I use) But the T3+ has a higher percentage useage of the cores (795% of 800% - 543% of 600%). So actually they are about equal.
    That means that the N2 actually is faster than the T3+. T3+ uses 99% of it's cores, the N2 90%. 
    So the (10254 / 100)  * 90 =  9321.81 would the T3+ get with the same % useage as the N2.

    Compression numbers are more useless, only 625% of 800% vs 543% of 600%. So you can not use the totals in 7-zip. I find decompression the most value of 7-zip.

    Here a list with sbc's I've benchmarked. Note one benchmark says nothing. But you can get an idea with many.
     

     
  23. Like
    NicoD reacted to rooted in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    N2 results
     
    http://ix.io/1Brv
     
    Take these results with a grain of salt since i paid no mind to starting load average.
     
    Could someone give me a break down of the results compared to say a rk3399?
     
    I have never used this benchmark and have no idea if the results are as they should be.
  24. Like
    NicoD reacted to JMCC in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    Just a notice that I edited my last post above, to include a link to a very interesting discussion at CNXSoft, that clarifies the PCIe matter. A kind of a summary, with some additional insights by @tkaiser in this article:
    https://github.com/ThomasKaiser/Knowledge/blob/master/articles/Quick_Preview_of_ODROID-N2.md
  25. Like
    NicoD reacted to rooted in Announcement : Odroid N2   
    I'm running sbc-bench on the N2 right now, will share the results when finished.
     
    I did have to alter the script in order for it to run, there is a process called (vdec-core) which is using 4% of a core and throwing off the load average.
     
    (I do not have any external storage attached)
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