How well do newer Raspberry Pi models play HD video from web?

What are the newer Raspberry Pi models?

I have an RPi3 with Raspbian.

I tried for several days to get it to play Sopcast and AceStream streams with OMX, which is possible according to some, but I was ultimately unsuccessful and instead got my hands on a laptop onto which I put Debian 8 from a live DVD I got from Linux Magazine from the public library.

Then I installed the Adobe Flash Player and didn't even have to bother with the streams to get to the Olympics.

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Flash is a well known CPU/GPU hog.

I can get a 'scrap' PC - fully working in case with PSU that loaded with linux is capable of outperforming a Pi byu a factor of at least ten.

7-20 year old 64 bit machines are ten a penny.

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TNP> 7-20 year old 64 bit machines are ten a penny.

AL> 20 year old 64 bit machines?

DEC Alpha boxen? :-)

-Andy Ball

With a power consumption best measured in hundreds of watts though. A Pi 3, an Odroid or even an S905 based TV box also outperform a Pi by at least a factor of ten with much lower power consumption.

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tens of watts.

Indeed. But is that the issue here?

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20 year old 64 bit machines? Not 'scrap' PCs then. 1996 and we had basic Pentiums running at 200Mhz - so still 32 bit. I wouldn't think a PC of that vintage would outperform a Pi.

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Not always. My desktop machine is a quad-core I5 Fujitsu Esprimo and it typically consumes around 20 watts, even with three hard disk drives and 8Gb memory.

It *is* difficult to find actual power consumption figures though so it can be a bit of a lottery getting what you want.

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Chris Green

Apart from anything else, with modern on-board power management and highly efficient PSUs, *overall* power consumption is not only much lower than it used to be, but highly dependent on what the computer is doing.

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W J G

sorry. 7-10 that should have said.

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on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer  
projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to  
contemplate a rollback of the industrial age. 

Richard Lindzen

Very much so. I run temperature monitors on GPU and CPU on this linux machine. Playing real time games doubles the power on the GPU and editing videos doubles the CPU....;-)

Eealy pentiums are to be avoided. Power hogs. But dual core celerons are a lot better.

--
Future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early  
twenty-first century?s developed world went into hysterical panic over a  
globally average temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and,  
on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer  
projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to  
contemplate a rollback of the industrial age. 

Richard Lindzen

here is something of interest in this context. CPUs to snog, marry or avoid...

Not that none of these actually dissipate that when just idling.

6-8W is probably typical

Core 2 duo architectures are very good power performance

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That's what is always said but I've nover noticed it in practice. The above Esprimo idles at about 18 watts and I've never managed to push it up to more than 24 watts or so.

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Chris Green

They're ancient though aren't they? I've found the later versions of I3 and I5 much better than my old Core xx processors.

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Chris Green

Thats because the actual static drain to run al the kits is only about

18W, and the extra 6 represents what the CPU is taken under modest load. Very few loads apart from deliberate bench tests will stress the CPU for long enough to be really noticeable. Its easier to stress the GPU with real time games.

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My original point was they are cheap and *good enough* with a reasonable GPU to do full screen flash 'videos off websites'.

It was about 8 years ago that a cheap Nvidia card and a celeron achived that benchmark for me.

(my brand new 'smart' TV cant by the way. BBC I-player stutters, but get_iplayer will turn it into MP4 which it plays faultlessely.).

The mere fact that they are not as good as I3 and I5 is what makes them cheap...

Not sure what I am running on this desktop, but its rather nice...

-Computer- Processor : 4x Intel(R) Core(TM) i3-4170 CPU @ 3.70GHz

Quad core I3? yes, better than a celeron,. but the celeron was OK till its ethernet died.

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But consume more power. The best I managed with that generation of processors was around 44 watts idling (now running as my backup machine).

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Chris Green

Yes, I must admit I rarely stress the graphics, I don't play games at all.

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Chris Green

On 12/08/2016 07:43, The Natural Philosopher wrote: > I can get a 'scrap' PC - fully working in case with PSU that loaded > with linux is capable of outperforming a Pi byu a factor of at least > ten.

On some CPU benchmarks yes, but the GPU in the Pi is pretty tasty, certainly better than the older the Intel integrated stuff.

Make sure the GPU has at least 128MB allocated to it, and as long as the HD graphics aren't wrapped in Flash, a Pi2 or Pi3 with enough CPU cores to comfortably handle pulling down the video, can just let the GPU do its stuff.

AMD didn't even launch the 64 bit instruction set until 2000.

But it is quite amazing how well a bang up to date Linux distro works on machines of that era, compared to how they struggled running even ancient versions of Windows.

---druck

I don't recall ever having any real issues with Windows on any machine I've had in the last 20 years as long as it had enough memory. The problems happen when machines are sold with less than adequate memory as "entry level" which means it won't run for crap.

I will acknowledge it is amazing how much memory is required just to boot the computer and open a few browser windows, but memory is cheap these days.

--

Rick C