Just out of curiosity, what x86 is RPi3 equivalent.

[fruitoftheloom]

Great! I was just looking for something like this.

I was trying to explain to a friend that I work with some people who use HP thin clients for their business purposes. But there are no applications really installed on the clients, just that each "application" is just a URL to a web-based application. So my reasoning is that you only need a network card with a GPU (video card) with a enough 'oomph!' to drive HTML5 graphics and resolutions. We aren't watching movies but there may be some graphical based education tutorials online to view.

If something like the Pi3 could be used, it would mean one-tenth the cost of owning a thin client. I will be testing just to make sure the Pi could even log on and handle the sites but it would be nice to show where the Pi3 fits in terms of web-based activities with other PCs.

Raspberry Pi Thin Clients, here are a few examples:

https://www.ncomputing.com/products/rxseries

http://www.viewsoniceurope.com/uk/produ ... SC-T25.php

https://winterminal.com

[peterlite]

For the types of things I do, A Pi 3 is faster than my old netbook due to the better graphics and LXDE instead of Cinnamon. Grid computing is moving away from the processor into the GPU. Almost everything requires CPU speed plus GPU or fast networking or fast storage. An x86 processor comparison really depends on the support chips used with the processor.

I prefer Linux Mint Cinnamon when the processor/disk is fast enough to run Cinnamon. The LXDE I tested on the old netbook was unreliable. The Raspbian version of LXDE is reliable. The Pi 3 uses about one quarter the power used by the processor in the netbook. The graphics part of the Pi, combined with LXDE, makes the combination complete common tasks at about the same speed as the netbook.

The netbook had SSD. A very slow old SSD. I use fast microSD cards in my Pi and they are slightly faster than the cheap SSD in the netbook. They write about the same speed.

The netbook could read disk many times faster than the USB 2 limit on the Pi. I could have used the netbook as a NAS with terabytes of disk.

The Pi 3 processor kills the low powered processors of a few years ago but is forever limited by the external interface. The low powered processors of a few years ago had their interfaces in support chips and some motherboards had fast support chips, giving you fast Wifi, fast disk, and Gigabit Ethernet. They make a bigger difference than the processor.

The Pi wins on graphics and the Pi 4 with USB 3 will beat everything else.

[321]

I think its hard to quantify because there are so many variables, so perhaps the thread title is the wrong question to ask?

Perhaps a better question to ask, is something like "Is the pi good enough to use for doing XYZ tasks?".

Reason I say this, is you could marry a top of the line CPU, with very limited ram and a dog slow hard drive and you would not see the performance, you hoped to see. Sure things like L1/L2 cache on the cpu could improve some tasks, but just look at the differences seen in HW when looking at laptops, desktops, & servers and the bottlenecks in the bus architecture.

Slow spin hard drives are needed on laptops to provide reliability from knocks, compared to super fast hard drives in a myriad of raid configurations as seen on servers.

For everyday use, the pi3 is good enough for your typical user, someone needing email, document writing, spreadsheet, & web browsing, and I would say Pixel/Raspbian as it stands today is good enough to use in anger, its very optimised if you are not really interested in the fancy graphic effects that you see in other OS's.

Its not a gaming rig for the hardcore gamers, but a little tip when playing games like quake et al, you can identify your enemy's fastest with all fancy effects switched off.

I'd say the pi3 could be used by the majority of office users in the world especially when considering how much work is offloaded to various server's like SQL servers. I wouldnt consider MS Exchange offloaded to the server when considering a copy of all your emails are downloaded on to the desktop for Outlook to read when connection is lost with the server.

Even the key to a fast SQL server is just presorted tables of data for fast read access and plenty of ram to act as a cache of sorts.

And with todays need for security, perhaps the Pi's are best because its more affordable to have multiple pi's for dedicated tasks like one for online banking, and another for day to day use, than just one device that does everything.

Perhaps another way to look at it is, look at how far mobile phones have come along and look at what you can do on them, if you need a different sort of comparison to help answer the question of what are the pi's good for.

JMO.

[ktb]

A 2007 era desktop class processor, constrained to 1GB RAM, still retaining the 's' on the "swankier" graphics (but without the "much, much"), and with weaker i/o.

That sounds about right. Perhaps retain the "much, much" for the poetic effect but put it in front of "weaker i/o."

Yeah, that pretty much works for me. I might set that date back 2-3 years and say laptop.

[k-pi]

I bought my Pi3 to test whether it was suitable as a desktop replacement for simple daily tasks - internet, email, movies & music.

My conclusion is yes, similar to an Atom based netbook regarding performance for my usage.

[fruitoftheloom]

I bought my Pi3 to test whether it was suitable as a desktop replacement for simple daily tasks - internet, email, movies & music.

My conclusion is yes, similar to an Atom based netbook regarding performance for my usage.

+1 I had a Atom Nettop and it was ""running"" Windows 10 x86-64 and it was not very responsive....

....so sold it and bought a RPi 3B https://www.element14.com/community/doc ... tarter-kit ideal for Internet Browsing and LibreOffice Writer & Calc.

[ktb]

My old Dell Inspiron Mini 10v (1011) netbook from 2009 (running OS X 10.6.8) still seems to beat any Pi's I have when it comes to common, everyday tasks (Internet usage). I figure that within 2-4 years, that will no longer be true.

Intel Atom N270 1.60 GHz single core, 512KB L2 Cache
1 GB 533 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

I certainly wouldn't try running Windows 10 on the Mini 10v, but Windows 10 likes to have (or requires?) more RAM than it has and has poor memory management in general.

[scruss]

For some things, a 2009 Atom D510 box that I have can be slower than a Raspberry Pi 3: it's a 1.66 GHz dual-core. For flat-out benchmark performance, the Raspberry Pi 3 wins out. But the Atom's 4 GB RAM and 1.5 TB SATA drive make it able to do things that the Raspberry Pi 3 would get dreadfully slow on. The Atom feels slower than the Pi - I suspect if I put a nice lightweight Linux distribution on it it would perk up.

[peterlite]

Windows 10 comparisons are tough. Sort of like Vista but without the excuse of being new. I reverted to Windows 8.1 and that is on a monster machine. Windows 8 seems to run its bloatware ok on 2 cores, one for the bloat and one for the ware. Windows 10 needs 6 cores just to run the code that checks your licence.

Raspbian uses 0.5 cores for Linux, 0.3 cores for Raspbian, and the rest is free for your application.

[ktb]

Windows 10 comparisons are tough. Sort of like Vista but without the excuse of being new. I reverted to Windows 8.1 and that is on a monster machine. Windows 8 seems to run its bloatware ok on 2 cores, one fore the bloat and one fore the ware. Windows 10 needs 6 cores just to run the code that checks your licence.

Count me as thoroughly entertained.

[bensimmo]

While I run Win10 as it runs nicer on my low memory (2Gb) laptops than the previous ones 8.1/7/vista (XP originally). And nicer on my 4Gb old T4500 AiO than 8.1/7(win7 originally)

Pixel on x86 also runs nicely on these, it's just not as refined. All of them make the Pi3 feel slow when using them with Pixel with x86 (from a PenDrive).
At least now there is a comparable operating system and desktop to compare with.

[AntonAV]

Great! I was just looking for something like this.

I was trying to explain to a friend that I work with some people who use HP thin clients for their business purposes. But there are no applications really installed on the clients, just that each "application" is just a URL to a web-based application. So my reasoning is that you only need a network card with a GPU (video card) with a enough 'oomph!' to drive HTML5 graphics and resolutions. We aren't watching movies but there may be some graphical based education tutorials online to view.

If something like the Pi3 could be used, it would mean one-tenth the cost of owning a thin client. I will be testing just to make sure the Pi could even log on and handle the sites but it would be nice to show where the Pi3 fits in terms of web-based activities with other PCs.

With the latest Raspbian Chromium v56 the graphics come closer to becoming competition for good old Windows XP on some older dual core PCs. Pi 3Bs definitely beat these terribly expensive thin clients in cost / performance. Reminds me of HP (and others) laser toner "scam" vs the new and 1000x cheaper inktank setup (scam = business).

[AntonAV]

Windows 8 seems to run its bloatware ok on 2 cores, one fore the bloat and one for the ware. Windows 10 needs 6 cores just to run the code that checks your licence.

That, or all that CIA / NSA / GCHQ stuff, combined with Russian and Chinese hacks in the build in security gaps

[bensimmo]

Windows 8 seems to run its bloatware ok on 2 cores, one fore the bloat and one for the ware. Windows 10 needs 6 cores just to run the code that checks your licence.

That, or all that CIA / NSA / GCHQ stuff, combined with Russian and Chinese hacks in the build in security gaps

I have a Huawei phone... So why should i worry about the Americans listening in when China knows everything already.

[AntonAV]

Windows 8 seems to run its bloatware ok on 2 cores, one fore the bloat and one for the ware. Windows 10 needs 6 cores just to run the code that checks your licence.

That, or all that CIA / NSA / GCHQ stuff, combined with Russian and Chinese hacks in the build in security gaps

I have a Huawei phone... So why should i worry about the Americans listening in when China knows everything already.

Lol! I use a Chinese Coolpad, great value for money (dumped on the market here for $112 - 3 GB RAM + 8 cores). I run free CM Security and do not trust the Chinese Communist Party hacks to be under more noble orders than the U$ Establishment ones, but the device is still fast.

[peterlite]

I expect my refrigerator would be secure. It has no Internet connection I can find. Everything else is suspect.

[runboy93]

RPi 3 perform much better than my potato quality PC:

Pentium 4, 2GHz
504Mb
32/64Mb GPU
Samsung HDD (very sluggish)
Windows XP

[Heater]

There is no such x86 equivalent to the RPi3.

[x42y3]

Well, considering all aspects then its quite impossible to compare those things.
But then, just from performance perspective I would say Intel Atom Z3736F is rather close. You can dig x86 vs ARM benchmarks at notebook check site. To put that into another perspective then look at CPU benchmark dot net and look for single thread chart.

[ProDigit]

For future reference, the Pi3's broadcomm equals about to a 1-1,4Ghz single core x86 CPU in computations,but the processor will feel snappier in a desktop environment,thanks to multithreading and faster access to RAM.

can't wait for Raspberry Pi 4!