Expecting Too Much

[geffers]

I have a number of Pi devices for various projects but just before Christmas my laptop died so I decided to use my quad core Pi 2 running Ubuntu Mate as my main computer for a while.

Not too bad but web browsing seems slow, pages take some time to load, various messages 'waiting for this or waiting for that', BBC embedded video reports 'not supported by my device'.

I have an mpeg license, I have upped the GPU usage from the default 64 to 256, I have tried epiphany-browser but all the same.

Are we expecting too much from the Pi? Just wondering.

Geffers

[tonywaite]

The Pi2 struggles, compared to a web-optimised Laptop at twenty times the price.

However I think that you would appreciate the move to a Pi3. It's not as good as a modern Laptop, but it's much snappier than the Pi2!

[ghans]

HTML5 video support inside Epiphany will not be as
smooth and performant as an omxplayer-powered solution.

Perhaps have a look into Minimal Kiosk Browser which uses
omxplayer , it might work on BBC videos too.

ghans

[geffers]

The Pi2 struggles, compared to a web-optimised Laptop at twenty times the price.

However I think that you would appreciate the move to a Pi3. It's not as good as a modern Laptop, but it's much snappier than the Pi2!

I'm not complaining, my old original Chinese Pi is serving videos to numerous devices in my home, it also runs Apache (Bit over the top) to send videos to a friend in US, also runs xsane so scanner used by any computer. Two early Pis running Kodi receiving HD video from my server. Another runs TV Headend and streams live TV to my Kodi devices.

Thought the quad core Pi models might have handled web video better as CPU similar to many mobile phones.

Never mind, shall have to buy another laptop and use Pis for projects

Geffers

[alexeames]

Seriously. Try a Pi3 it's a much improved web-browsing experience. You'll probably end up getting a laptop anyway, but for those who can't afford one it's a credible alternative.

[liudr]

A 150 USD netbook will beat rpi current models hands down on web surfing and video playing. I would get a laptop. If budget is tight, I'd get a netbook. I programmed on an asus X205TA ($150) with multiple windows open and searching the web for answers at the same time. Compiling code may be slower but overall experience is a lot better than $35 pi + extra money cables psu, sd card keyboard and mouse etc.

[stderr]

Are we expecting too much from the Pi? Just wondering.

Regarding the speed of the pi2, and I suppose pi3, did you verify that it is really running at its nominal speed?

[GTR2Fan]

I have a number of Pi devices for various projects but just before Christmas my laptop died so I decided to use my quad core Pi 2 running Ubuntu Mate as my main computer for a while.

An overclocked Pi2B is handling being a reasonably capable desktop PC replacement here, so you could try that route before parting with £30. It's quicker than a friend's Pi3B that throttles back at the slightest provocation, not that I'm suggesting that they all will, obviously.

[stderr]

It's quicker than a friend's Pi3B that throttles back at the slightest provocation, not that I'm suggesting that they all will, obviously.

Are they throttling because the governor is borked or because of heat? The reason I suggested looking at the speed is because I kept seeing byobu saying that I had 4 cores going at .6GHz. Well, it's a pi2, shouldn't it ever say the rated .9GHz? So I went in and changed the system to just run at .9GHz and you know what, it seemed faster! If someone is not running byobu (or something else that tells them this information), they might think they are at .9GHz but they are really at something else like .6GHz.

[JimmyN]

It's quicker than a friend's Pi3B that throttles back at the slightest provocation, not that I'm suggesting that they all will, obviously.

Have him increase the "sampling_down_factor" to 40, and it won't drop out of "turbo" as quickly. Otherwise if it has to wait too many milliseconds for an input or something it will drop out of turbo mode briefly, then nail the throttle again to get back up to speed.

The "sampling_down_factor" is a multiplier for the "sampling_rate" when in turbo mode, but the default is 1, which basically means none. It will help with a Pi2B as well, or any RPi, to keep it from rapidly cycling up and down while doing some tasks.

Code: Select all

sudo echo 40 > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpufreq/ondemand/sampling_down_factor

That will let you try it, and experiment with different values, to see how it works but it won't survive a reboot. The higher the value the longer it will wait before decreasing speed. You'll have to add it to a script and run at boot, or edit the value in /etc/init.d/raspi-config if you want to make it permanent.

[geffers]

Seriously. Try a Pi3 it's a much improved web-browsing experience. You'll probably end up getting a laptop anyway, but for those who can't afford one it's a credible alternative.

I'll end up with a Pi3 and yes, you're right, will end up with laptop too.

Geffers

[geffers]

I have a number of Pi devices for various projects but just before Christmas my laptop died so I decided to use my quad core Pi 2 running Ubuntu Mate as my main computer for a while.

An overclocked Pi2B is handling being a reasonably capable desktop PC replacement here, so you could try that route before parting with £30. It's quicker than a friend's Pi3B that throttles back at the slightest provocation, not that I'm suggesting that they all will, obviously.

Interesting, haven't tried over clocking. Worth a try at some point if I keep an eye on the CPU temperature.

Geffers

[geffers]

Are we expecting too much from the Pi? Just wondering.

Regarding the speed of the pi2, and I suppose pi3, did you verify that it is really running at its nominal speed?

Yes, correct speed.

Geffers.

[Taxicletter]

Regarding the speed of the pi2, and I suppose pi3, did you verify that it is really running at its nominal speed?

What's this? "Running a nominal speed"? What speed are you talking about, where can I control that? I tried Raspbian, now trying Ubuntu Mate, both to slow to be useable...
Overclocking is disabled at the moment, I found a way to get around that (something about changing some file), but I can't find it again .

[pxgator]

I'll end up with a Pi3 and yes, you're right, will end up with laptop too.

Geffers

@Geffers
You might like to check out this thread:
viewtopic.php?p=921165#p921165

I was a bit skeptical at first so with a small heatsink and fan applied to my RPi3
http://www.ebay.com/itm/221950553658?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT
I used the following code in /boot/config.txt. So far it has been rock
solid stable and my RPi3 rips along at a very respectable pace.

P.S.
Using the latest jessie by way of noobs. Using iceweasel as my
browser as it is considerably faster than epiphany and full screen
youtube videos are suprisingly smooth.....better than I expected.
The sd card I am using is a SanDisk Ultra 32GB microSDHC UHS-I.
The temp never exceeds 70C when running cpuburn-a53 for an hour.

Code: Select all

force_turbo=1
dtparam=sd_overclock=100
arm_freq=1300
core_freq=500
over_voltage=4
sdram_freq=575
sdram_schmoo=0x02000020
over_voltage_sdram_p=6
over_voltage_sdram_i=4
over_voltage_sdram_c=4
v3d_freq=500
h264_freq=333
gpu_mem=256

[stderr]

Regarding the speed of the pi2, and I suppose pi3, did you verify that it is really running at its nominal speed?

What's this? "Running a nominal speed"? What speed are you talking about, where can I control that? I tried Raspbian, now trying Ubuntu Mate, both to slow to be useable...

There are several things that can be problems and they include, I suppose, throttling due to overheating. That shouldn't be a problem unless you are seriously overclocking but some people are making various claims. I just think it is important to make sure that the governor is actually making the system run at whatever the high speed is supposed to be. If you aren't happy with the performance, is it really running at the claimed speed?

[karrika]

I have also been playing with ChromeOS on my Raspberry Pi 3. It works pretty well imho. Full screen videos are sometimes freezing but if I browse them as smaller size the system works nice.

ChromeOS is "just a browser" but it looks a bit more mainstream than Raspbian to me.

On a related (Raspbian) performance note I found out that the 3D monkey head rotates with full speed in a small windows using OpenGL. But the full screen 3D rotation slows down by a factor of 10. There are no errors but it is just slow. This was run with a very old lousy mobile phone power supply. Perhaps its max power is close to 0.5A. I really need to buy a better one before any serious testing. I have a dream of creating a set of full screen OpenGL conning instruments for serious navigation. But this would require really responsive OpenGL support. My meshes will be simple but i want to use the shader.

[Heater]

Karrika,

If you want properly accerated OpenGL full screen you can do it by rendering straight to the frame buffer, bypassing X.

I have done this with qtcreator. I can dig out the details if you like.

[Taxicletter]

What's this? "Running a nominal speed"? What speed are you talking about, where can I control that? I tried Raspbian, now trying Ubuntu Mate, both to slow to be useable...

There are several things that can be problems and they include, I suppose, throttling due to overheating. That shouldn't be a problem unless you are seriously overclocking but some people are making various claims. I just think it is important to make sure that the governor is actually making the system run at whatever the high speed is supposed to be. If you aren't happy with the performance, is it really running at the claimed speed?

Until yesterday, I didn't change anything but the GPU. I changed that because I read somewhere to do that if you use the experimental openGL driver. And indeed, without increasing that, the driver would give me glitches and freezes. Increasing to 256 also froze my system in the end, but 128 works fine.

What I experience as "slowness" is that the system freezes, for a few nano-seconds or seconds, and then continues. That's the case with programs like Evolution or heavy websites, but also when not much is running. Also, my mouse-pointer's tempo is irregular: its slows down and speeds up unexpectedly. Now I overclocked (arm_freq=1000) and everything seems to run faster, but the freezes stay there, I have the impression it freezes a little longer now, but overal speed is better. Also the slowing down/speeding up of the mouse is still there.
When I also changed sdram_freq to 450, I had a total hang of my system, so I stopped that. I don't use a sink or other cooling, but I have the CPU temp in my bar and it's never over 60°C. CPU and RAM are also never very high.

Since I don't understand these:

Code: Select all

force_turbo=1
dtparam=sd_overclock=100
arm_freq=1300
core_freq=500
over_voltage=4
sdram_freq=575
sdram_schmoo=0x02000020
over_voltage_sdram_p=6
over_voltage_sdram_i=4
over_voltage_sdram_c=4
v3d_freq=500
h264_freq=333
gpu_mem=256

AND I don't use a heat sink, I don't fiddle with it.

[ghans]

As said , cool your Pi actively and check if
the cpufreq governor is set to "performance" .

Code: Select all

echo performance > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

ghans

[Flagbit]

If you force the CPU to be all the time at the higher frequency with

Code: Select all

force_turbo=1

in the config.txt,
what signs/s do you get when benchmarking with the command

Code: Select all

openssl speed rsa4096 -multi $(grep -c ^processor /proc/cpuinfo)

?

(With the result one can compare if the RPi is running with the normal speed)

[Taxicletter]

As said , cool your Pi actively and check if
the cpufreq governor is set to "performance" .

Code: Select all

echo performance > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor

ghans

I get "access denied". I tried with sudo in front of it, same result.
What is that governor anyway? I'll google it...

[Taxicletter]

If you force the CPU to be all the time at the higher frequency with

Code: Select all

force_turbo=1

in the config.txt,
what signs/s do you get when benchmarking with the command

Code: Select all

openssl speed rsa4096 -multi $(grep -c ^processor /proc/cpuinfo)

?

Code: Select all

Forked child 0
Forked child 1
Forked child 2
Forked child 3
+DTP:4096:private:rsa:10
+DTP:4096:private:rsa:10
+DTP:4096:private:rsa:10
+DTP:4096:private:rsa:10
+R1:46:4096:10.07
+DTP:4096:public:rsa:10
+R1:48:4096:10.10
+DTP:4096:public:rsa:10
+R1:48:4096:10.12
+DTP:4096:public:rsa:10
+R1:48:4096:10.20
+DTP:4096:public:rsa:10
+R2:3089:4096:10.00
+R2:3104:4096:10.00
+R2:3076:4096:10.00
+R2:3079:4096:10.01
Got: +F2:3:4096:0.212500:0.003251 from 0
Got: +F2:3:4096:0.218913:0.003237 from 1
Got: +F2:3:4096:0.210417:0.003222 from 2
Got: +F2:3:4096:0.210833:0.003251 from 3
OpenSSL 1.0.1k 8 Jan 2015
built on: Tue Mar  1 16:38:12 2016
options:bn(64,32) rc4(ptr,char) des(idx,cisc,16,long) aes(partial) blowfish(ptr) 
compiler: -I. -I.. -I../include  -fPIC -DOPENSSL_PIC -DOPENSSL_THREADS -D_REENTRANT -DDSO_DLFCN -DHAVE_DLFCN_H -DL_ENDIAN -DTERMIO -g -O2 -fstack-protector-strong -Wformat -Werror=format-security -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -Wl,-z,relro -Wa,--noexecstack -Wall -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_MONT -DOPENSSL_BN_ASM_GF2m -DSHA1_ASM -DSHA256_ASM -DSHA512_ASM -DAES_ASM -DGHASH_ASM
                  sign    verify    sign/s verify/s
rsa 4096 bits 0.053278s 0.000810s     18.8   1234.5

I leave that force_turbo thing like it is, or do I remove it after this test?

[Flagbit]

If it does not feel snappier with this, which makes it not to switch to a lower frequency when there is no load, you can also remove it.

In my case the Pi started quicker and was more snappy.

If you look here fore the word Overclocking, you find all Information about how to be able to use it at config.txt:
https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... fig-txt.md


With a Pi3 overclocked at 1300Mhz (with pi3 it may void warranty) I got around 34sign/s.
I also load the Ubuntu-Mate from an USB-Stick, which makes it very snappy and boot in around 30sec.(e.g. Firefox starts in around 6sec.)

Regards
Flagbit

[Flagbit]

. Now I overclocked (arm_freq=1000) and everything seems to run faster, but the freezes stay there, I have the impression it freezes a little longer now, but overal speed is better.

Do you use a class10 SD-card?