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I read "won't be a pi killer" as meaning it won't overtake rpi in sales volume; then "already kills pi in xyz areas" as saying it comes out better in technical comparisons between features across the two boards. It won't be the first time the market chose a technically inferior product.
I've also heard the Odroid stuff works pretty well, and outperforms the raspberry stuff by a lot.
First up, full disclosure, another moderator here. I'm posting because I have had the opportunity of being a pre-release tester of the rock64, so have first-hand experience with the rock64, which isn't out in the wild yet.
Having using Raspberry Pis (1st gen, 2nd gen), Cubietrucks, Orange Pi Zeros, and the pine64
, I can say that the rock64 is shaping up to be a much better board than the pine64 for several reasons. Firstly, Pine have learnt from their mistakes with the pine64. No 'bigger than life' claims about the board... no 'super-computers' here this time! Things such as the microUSB input for power, which have been a sore point, have been thrown out the door, and a more suitable barrel jack power connector have been used. This board is designed to be 95% identical to the Raspberry Pi form factor... and in fact fits in most rPi cases with no or minimal modification. Then there is the use of a Rockchip processor, which is being actively supported by Rockchip, and the current "community builds" linux builds are already using linux kernel 4.4, and work is being done to bring support for the RK3328 into the mainline kernel. So far, all the basics work - USB3 works pretty well, there haven't been any GbE ethernet issues with any of our tests so far, all but one of the GPIOs work as expected so far (and the latter is most likely a configuration issue), the eMMC works well (and is very fast).
So yes, this may very well be a 'rPi killer'. Or perhaps people will want to stick with the rPi for a bit longer, because it is a mature product. Because, lets admit it (or at least I will since you other guys don't want to because it suits)... Pine is still new to this sphere. the pine64 had it's bumps along the road, but I'll bet if you tried a current image, you'd find the GbE issues are gone, or you had a faulty board, and should have contacted support to get it replaced. I can say from experience, as I was there when the rPi was first launched, that it was not all smelling of roses as it does now. They made some serious blunders in their original designs, and had no end of issues with the software. This isn't to say that Pine is perfect... they've made mistakes as well, but they are learning from them, improving their products, and work with the community to improve their products and software.
Now, feel free to go "oh, well, there goes another moderator harping on about how great Pine Microsystems products"... but keep this in mind:
a) I also have had problems with the pine64, and have freely admitted in on the forums.
b)
mostall of them (to date) have been resolved... either because they were software related, and have been diagnosed and fixed or were hardware related, and a workaround was found and documentedc) the pine64 is a development board made to a price, not a rigorously tested Apple iMac... expect rough edges with your $15 and $29 board (who can repeat after me "My $7 Orange Pi Zero Has C$%p WiFi But I Expect It To Work Like My Laptop!")
d) I really do like the rock64 (and not just because I got it for free) - It is rPi small, has a 4GB memory option, has a good performance quad core processor, as GbE ethernet and USB3 (and facility for a second 100T NIC), eMMC + SD options... and reasonable low power performance. Yes, some important stuff doesn't work at the moment (looking at you audio and IR)... but for a board that isn't even in the hands of customers yet... it's already shaping up very well. Android 7.1 seems to work, and there are ubuntu and debian linux OSs for it, with desktop and server variants, and even a OpenMediaVault distro ready to run. So can you understand why those of us who have one already might be excited about it? /rant over
In my experiences with the Pine world, you have been one of the moderators that I do hold in a higher regard and I appreciate your time to posting. I'll wait to see how things shake out with the new board as admittedly the previous ones were very rough and if it wasn't for the volunteer work of Longsleep things would still be in sad shape. Getting away from Allwinner is a smart move, and I have seen and used other Rockchip boards and will probably stay with them, but an open review is nice.
Got a RockPro64. It's shit. 4K output? false advertising. Droid images are capped at 1080p60, and they look as if that's an upscaled 480p. As far as CPU/RAM performance it's ok I guess. Nothing spectacular for the price, not quite sure what they were going for when they designed it. Clearly not 4K movie streaming/watching...
Fuck dude, it's 2019. That thread is from 2017. You're late to the discussion.
No SATA.
Ok, thx, bye.
Fixed that for you.