News AMD Ryzen-Powered Raspberry Pi Rival Uses Radeon Vega Graphics

[Admin]

The new Axiom CAPA13R SBC uses an AMD Ryzen APU to challenge the Raspberry Pi.

AMD Ryzen-Powered Raspberry Pi Rival Uses Radeon Vega Graphics : Read more

 

[Warsaw]

Very interesting. Looking forward to when they release pricing and I see some reviews on it. It really is incredible over the years at how much technology they are putting into smaller and smaller form factors.

 

[deesider]

A neat looking device. I expect the price to be 5 times the rpi4 - but maybe worth it depending on intended use.

 

[nitrium]

I'm assuming you can install Windows on it? If so, that alone makes this a pretty compelling product.

 

[vov4ik_il]

I would expect 500~700$ pricing, nowhere near the RPi. Other Axiomtech SBC products for price approximation reference.

 

[watzupken]

This looks like it is running single channel memory since there is only a single slot which is not ideal for both CPU and GPU. Form factor wise, it is great.

 

[SleepyD]

Articles like this are ridiculous. It’s only a competitor to the Pi if it is in a similar price range which it probably will not be.

 

[extremepenguin]

If this thing launches at sub $300 I’ll snag one to upgrade my pi4 I have running my MAME cabinet. Otherwise no thanks.

 

[dfflick]

Yeah, it's a rival to the Pi, like a Porsche is a rival to a Prius.

Do better.

 

[russell_john]

Well at least they didn't use the stale old "Raspberry Pi Killer" nonsense in the headline ....

 

[Rdslw]

A neat looking device. I expect the price to be 5 times the rpi4 - but maybe worth it's depending on intended use.

I wanted something like this, in most cases a netflix box, capable of light gaming. with extendable ram slot, its ALMOST perfect. I would enjoy bigger m2 slot, and I feel that they could, adding mount screw to back mount for cpu cooling, (only a bit sketchy, I've seen worse in sff OEM).
But I guess If I can get my hands on it, its good enough.

 

[bit_user]

As many already cited, the price is probably at least 5x. Possibly 10-20x, if they're targeting the industrial PC market.

However, what I haven't seen mentioned is the cooling requirements. For all the thermal issues Pi v4 had, this thing is going to dwarf it, in TDP. Easily 2-3x. So, it'll either require a huge passive heatsink or (more likely) active cooling.

If you want an x86 Pi-like board that's passively-cooled and not outrageously expensive, have a look at the ODROID-H2:

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h2/​

Bonus: it even has dual-channel memory!

 

[Randolph_Carter767]

This article is a joke. A 3.5" class SBC is about 3x the size of an RPi. I have a few boards based on this same embedded ryzen platform, they cost over $500 bare (no ram, storage, wifi, or OS). They're 15-25W TDP depending on the CPU version, so requires active cooling in most cases.

Anyway look up ibase918 or Kontron 3.5"-SBC-VR1000 for similar products, these are industrial SBCs.

 

[Uniblab]

Articles like this are ridiculous. It’s only a competitor to the Pi if it is in a similar price range which it probably will not be.

The title ,- if a much higher price turns out to be legitimate - is what happens when a product gets mixed in with its popularity instead of its intended use. Raspberry was created to be a low price entry point for personal computing so a "PC" could be available to more folks. The unexpected hobbiest and diy'r population was a bonus. Now larger oems are making devices that dont include the original theme. Wonder if there needs to be a "Toms Shoes" requirement if a product is said to be a "Pi" rival. Bombas socks also donate one for every one bought.

 

[kschewe_74]

Looks cool. Does anyone know if this cpu gpu would be able to emulate for ps2?

 

[farnell121]

Articles like this are ridiculous. It’s only a competitor to the Pi if it is in a similar price range which it probably will not be.

And this is 3x the size, not a compatible form-factor with Pi-like devices.

And it doesn't seem to have Raspberry Pi compatible GPIO..

And it's approx. 10x more expensive as you said...

 

[Randolph_Carter767]

Looks cool. Does anyone know if this cpu gpu would be able to emulate for ps2?

Its quite powerful, I'd say almost definitely.

 

[farnell121]

Yeah, it's a rival to the Pi, like a Porsche is a rival to a Prius.

Do better.

Amen. The article writer obviously doesn't spend a lot of indepth time with SBC's and is focused on a market segment the Pi is NOT trying to target.

If you want to hack together a device, use it like a powerful microcontroller, have it run small services, or get someone interested in the hardware/circuit level, most people will recommend Pi. And this is even when you are comparing against more powerful devices in this segment like the Le Potato, Odroid SBC's, Banana Pi and more.

If you are looking to run a desktop or demanding software, yeah, you'll more than likely skip the Pi entirely, especially if you dont care about GPIO or at least Pi compatible GPIO. When you go this route you will pay more for the performance of an x86 versus the flexibility of ARM. I mean, PCIe ports, Vega GPU, 16GB RAM, all of that is brilliant and has it's market segment. Hell, I love building these into projects and as someone mentioned, this is a fine upgrade for projects like a MAME cabinet. And hell, because it's x86 and has PCIe, you can attach an older Radeon and have it output true retro RGB signals, possibilities are limitless here.

All I am saying is... You're comparing an x86 laptop class CPU with an embedded ARM board used primarily for it's GPIO and maybe retro emulation. There is no comparison.

 

[farnell121]

As many already cited, the price is probably at least 5x. Possibly 10-20x, if they're targeting the industrial PC market.

However, what I haven't seen mentioned is the cooling requirements. For all the thermal issues Pi v4 had, this thing is going to dwarf it, in TDP. Easily 2-3x. So, it'll either require a huge passive heatsink or (more likely) active cooling.

If you want an x86 Pi-like board that's passively-cooled and not outrageously expensive, have a look at the ODROID-H2:

https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h2/​

Bonus: it even has dual-channel memory!

Didn't think about TDP which is obvious now I think about it, this also translates to complexity for beginners making a device and affect battery life. There is a market segment for this but it comes off as Apples and Tomatoes are similar because they are both fruit.

 

[farnell121]

Looks cool. Does anyone know if this cpu gpu would be able to emulate for ps2?

If its faster than an old nVidia 9800 GT, it should run it smoother than an original PS2 in some games like Shadow of the Colossus. You're definitely good here, and can actually run wine or playonlinux if you really wanna get crazy thanks to it being x86.

 

[farnell121]

This article is a joke. A 3.5" class SBC is about 3x the size of an RPi. I have a few boards based on this same embedded ryzen platform, they cost over $500 bare (no ram, storage, wifi, or OS). They're 15-25W TDP depending on the CPU version, so requires active cooling in most cases.

Anyway look up ibase918 or Kontron 3.5"-SBC-VR1000 for similar products, these are industrial SBCs.

Basically comparing a desktop to a cell phone, an under-powered cell phone. It's not fair to call it a Pi competitor.

Why can't they let forums members like us write up some articles? I mean we actually seem like we've played around with these and know what buyers remorse some articles can lead to for beginners.

Someone is obsessed with specs and benchmarks versus real-world application comparisons. Hey, at least this article isn't suggesting an ARM board with a powerful GPU.

I bought a Le Potato several years ago because one of these articles suggested that it had a faster GPU, 4K output, linux and Pi GPIO compatability.... What the author was unaware of is there weren't (and still aren't) any real Linux userland GPU acceleration, only closed-source Android drivers. And it took over a year to be able to write Linux to eMMC module.. And GPIO isnt truely compatible without tweaks... And the Pi actually ran OpenMW faster because of this...... All they needed to do was actually purchase one and spend an hour or less with it. :l

 

[bit_user]

Why can't they let forums members like us write up some articles? I mean we actually seem like we've played around with these and know what buyers remorse some articles can lead to for beginners.

You can probably contact a managing editor and inquire about writing content for the site.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/about-us,4260.html​

That's just a guess. You might also ask about it, here:

https://forums.tomshardware.com/forums/forum-feedback.64/​

 

[bit_user]

If Vega had tensor cores, I'll bet a 15 W laptop Ryzen-based board would compare pretty well against a Nvidia Jetson board (which also use up to 15 W, IIRC).

With a smaller APU, perhaps you could build something cost-competitive with this:

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/nvidia-jetson-xavier-nx-developer-kit-tested​

 

[mcgge1360]

A neat looking device. I expect the price to be 5 times the rpi4 - but maybe worth it depending on intended use.

I don't see how this is a "rival" to the RPI. Wow it's faster and has more modern connectivity, ok it's also gonna be multitudes more expensive. The RPI is a low cost device that can run low power applications. The only thing this has in common is the form factor.

 

[Findecanor]

I would rather compare this to something like the 96boards, that are larger and more capable — and more expensive than the Raspberry Pi.