Given how well the
ODROID N2 compares with the RockPro64, I wonder if ODROID could release a cost-reduced version to compete with this.
The two best things about the RK3399 are its PCIe lanes and its GPU. With the HardRock64 dumping the PCIe, I'm not really sure about the value proposition vs. the Pi v4, especially considering the loss of 2x A72 cores.
I agree about the PCIe being kind of a big deal to drop. I also think the N2 looks like a nice board, those 4 A73 cores are nice, and over 1/3 faster per unit of clock speed.
If the HardRock64 keeps its other specs the same, though, that would make its A72 cores 1/3 faster than Rpi4's (2ghz to 1.5ghz), and the A53 cores run at the same speed as the Rpi4's A72s. the A53 has a lower DMIPS/MHz speed, but not less than half, meaning that the 4 cores actually are more powerful than the 2 extra A72 cores on the Rpi4. (specs on this at
Comparison of ARM v8-A cores). Taking that data and extrapolating it, The HardRock, like the Rock64Pro, will do about 34700 Dhrystone MIPS vs the Rpi4's 28320, about 22.5% faster. It's also likely to use a bit less power when not working hard (I'm having trouble finding exact specs but the A53 cores are rather power efficients).
If that rendering is correct, it looks like the HardRock64 will also have EMMC on-board, which is nice to have.
As far as I know, there is no 8GB Pine64 project on the horizon just yet, so Pi gets a big edge on that. Most people will probably be good with 4, but having that extra opens up some nice functional and performance possibilities.
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