Raspberry Pi 4 - fast enough for a desktop?

You mentioning video reminds me of talk of running an HTPC on earlier Raspberry Pi models. If they worked, maybe they didn't use them to view Youtube and the like, of course.

Thanks for the above info. I wanted to move to a 4k desktop when I saw the RPi4 announcement. For various reasons I will look into the idea of mini-itx that Martin mentioned but will maybe come back to the RPi4 for an HTPC front end to a MythTV system - at least at up to 1080p.

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James Harris

For lack of vp9 hardware decoding, I fear the Pi4 will never be good for Youtube 4k videos. And it's a real shame they couldn't squeeze h.264 hardware decoding in, so no higher than 1080p for that either. And while the cpu is capable enough to decode that, it will require active cooling, I guess.

...

When you mentioned that YouTube and other videos were jerky was that just the 4k ones, such that lower resolutions were OK?

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James Harris

My prime use for a RPi for: replacement for a 4GB dual Athlon whitebox PC run essentially headless[*] as a house server (provides MTA, local webserver, database, centralise backups, version control for my LAN) a

4GB RPi 4B should provide everything I need apart from the aforementioned binary compatibility. Using a mini-iTX instead adds binary compatibility but at about 3x or 4x the price - I looked at prices last week. [1] the house server runs headless 99% of the time but needs to have a key board and monitor, used only at boot time, because it has an encrypted partition and AFAIK there's no way to input the partition password except via a directly attached kbd + screen.

--
Martin    | martin at 
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

Fundamentally my server was in the sense taht it would be equavlent to a Pi+ power su[[ly + box, essentially free.

My local PC builder has dozens of traded in/left behind scrap PCS that are around 10 years old that are no longer able to run modern Windows programs.

I just have to ask nicely.

Especially if I buy 8TB of new disk to go in them.

They work as well as a pi. In asddition they take standard PCI cards, so for example internal TV adapters work..and make a neater gob than USB.

Sure you gan get a Pi hat...but they tend to ne a bit more pricey .

--
"The great thing about Glasgow is that if there's a nuclear attack it'll  
look exactly the same afterwards." 

Billy Connolly

All Youtube videos were jerky, even 720p.

For clarity the Pi 4 is supposed to have hardware support for:

HEVC decode to 4K@60 (with HDR) (HEVC=x265) H.264 decode to 1080p@60.

VLC is clearly already using H.264 hardware decode at 1080. I guess HEVC hardware decode will come with time. I haven't seen any mention of vp9 and of course av1 is a potential in the near future.

The main problem is that Chromium isn't using gpu support.

I could show the output of typing chrome://gpu into chromium, if anyone is interested.

Generally, I'm very sceptical of the need for 4k video.

I can understand someone wanting a 4k monitor. I've used a 30 inch

2560x1600 monitor for years and it is better than 1900*1080. I guess sitting 50cm from a 40 inch monitor at 4k would make a difference but I can't see that it would make a difference at TV distances. Anyway, if I was going to do that I would use something better than a Pi 4.

The benefit of the Pi is that it is low power and silent, nice to use for always on services.

I use Hypriot as a container Linux. Which means I don't really need to understand much about Pi, or even that much Linux.

I'm surprised you watch broadcast TV, I wouldn't have thought you were the type to willingly give money to the BBC.

I give money unwillingly to the BBC, like I give money unwillingingly to an electricity company whose prices have trebled since we had 'renewable energy'

One fights ones battles selectively.

At the moment the most importamt thing is to get enough democracy back so that the government actually works for the people, rather than the exact opposite.

Then we can tackle the BBC.

--
"The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow witted  
man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest  
thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly  
persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid  
before him." 

    - Leo Tolstoy

OK.

I'm not sure I understand that. Do you mean that the Pi has hardware which will do - or will help with - HEVC decode but VLC doesn't take advantage of it yet?

Please do.

I find HD and UHD look very similar on TV. In fact, the first time I saw a 4k programme it looked awful - clearly something else wrong with that particular programme. Watching some 4k tennis the other day it looked almost no different from the same tennis on HD.

But this is for computer use. My monitor is 26" 1920*1200 ... and it's time to upgrade!

Since 4k panels are so prevalent I guess 4k is the way to go so I went into PC World yesterday to see some examples of what that would look like in practice. But to my surprise they did not even have one example of such a setup in place. 4k TVs but no 4k monitors connected to computers.

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James Harris

On 06/07/2019 09:25, James Harris wrote:

Yes, VLC doesn't use it now but probably will in future. LibreElec may already be set up to use hardware HEVC.

Graphics Feature Status Canvas: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable Flash: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled Flash Stage3D: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled Flash Stage3D Baseline profile: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled Compositing: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled Multiple Raster Threads: Enabled Native GpuMemoryBuffers: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled Out-of-process Rasterization: Disabled Hardware Protected Video Decode: Disabled Rasterization: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled Skia Renderer: Disabled Surface Control: Disabled Surface Synchronization: Enabled Video Decode: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled Viz Service Display Compositor: Enabled WebGL: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable WebGL2: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable Problems Detected Native GpuMemoryBuffers have been disabled, either via about:flags or command line. Disabled Features: native_gpu_memory_buffers Skia renderer is not used by default. Disabled Features: skia_renderer Version Information Data exported 2019-07-06T18:28:56.621Z Chrome version Chrome/74.0.3729.157 Operating system Linux 4.19.50-v7l+ Software rendering list URL

Driver bug list URL ANGLE commit id unknown hash

2D graphics backend Skia/74 ae4b97edd5b9eeee9e4fe9814f67e3abc4ba1a75- Command Line /usr/lib/chromium-browser/chromium-browser-v7

--disable-quic --enable-tcp-fast-open

--ppapi-flash-path=/usr/lib/chromium-browser/libpepflashplayer.so

--ppapi-flash-args=enable_stagevideo_auto=0

--ppapi-flash-version=32.0.0.207 --disable-gpu --enable-pinch

--flag-switches-begin --ignore-gpu-blacklist --flag-switches-end

[snip]

Have you considered using a 4k TV as a monitor?

version would be fast enough to replace a desktop PC - just for basic compu ting such as web browsing, word processing, spreadsheets, file handing etc.

spberry Pi 2 running Raspbian and Twitter was unusable. Half the tweet coul d be typed before any characters became visible and clicks within the text would take a while to move the cursor.

on?

I have followed the growth of the Pi since its early days. Right Now, The Pi 4 must be treated like a very Early Pi. Booting is limited to the (fast er?) SD card and its video limited / Early days. The Pi 4 has vast IO and C PU upgrades, so that where performance gains live. First move swap off the SD card, and avoid demanding video jobs. The Pi 4 runs hot. Its CPU clock hard and fast, when pushed to 80 C. ZRam memory compression may help, squee zing more out of whatever memory your Pi has. the 4GB ram limit keeps the P I with 32 bit limits. The 8GB Pi4 would have pushed Raspbian out of pure 32 bit land. Perhaps later, after we adjust to the new Power Pi. I shall buy a Pi4 this fall. Bye bye Intel P4

For comparison, here's what I see on a vanilla install on RPi2 - and on a 1920x1200 screen, if that's relevant.

Graphics Feature Status Canvas: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable Flash: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable Flash Stage3D: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable Flash Stage3D Baseline profile: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable Compositing: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled Multiple Raster Threads: Enabled Native GpuMemoryBuffers: Software only. Hardware acceleration disabled Rasterization: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable Video Decode: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable Video Encode: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable VPx Video Decode: Software only, hardware acceleration unavailable WebGL: Hardware accelerated but at reduced performance WebGL2: Unavailable

Problems Detected Accelerated video decode is unavailable on Linux: 137247 Disabled Features: accelerated_video_decode Only enable WebGL for the Mesa Gallium llvmpipe driver: 571899 Disabled Features: webgl2, accelerated_vpx_decode, gpu_compositing, flash_stage3d, gpu_rasterization, flash_3d, flash_stage3d_baseline, accelerated_2d_canvas, panel_fitting, accelerated_video_decode, accelerated_video_encode

Clear uniforms before first program use on all platforms: 124764, 349137 Applied Workarounds: clear_uniforms_before_first_program_use Mesa drivers in Linux handle varyings without static use incorrectly: 333885 Applied Workarounds: count_all_in_varyings_packing Always rewrite vec/mat constructors to be consistent: 398694 Applied Workarounds: scalarize_vec_and_mat_constructor_args Limited enabling of Chromium GL_INTEL_framebuffer_CMAA: 535198 Applied Workarounds: disable_framebuffer_cmaa Disable partial swaps on Mesa drivers (detected with GL_VERSION): 339493 Applied Workarounds: disable_post_sub_buffers_for_onscreen_surfaces Decode and encode before generateMipmap for srgb format textures on os except macosx: 634519 Applied Workarounds: decode_encode_srgb_for_generatemipmap Mesa driver GL 3.3 requires invariant and centroid to match between shaders: 639760, 641129 Applied Workarounds: remove_invariant_and_centroid_for_essl3 Gpu compositing has been disabled, either via blacklist, about:flags or the command line. The browser will fall back to software compositing and hardware acceleration will be unavailable. Disabled Features: gpu_compositing Native GpuMemoryBuffers have been disabled, either via about:flags or command line. Disabled Features: native_gpu_memory_buffers

I have a 4k TV I can try but no computer with 4k output. Why I went into PC World was in the hope of seeing two things:

1. What a 4k desktop was like in practice on different size screens.

1. What, if any, curvature would be best.

Unfortunately, as I said, they didn't just lack a /selection/ of options to view but had no 4k desktop on display whatsoever.

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James Harris

I have a 43" or 108 cm 4k tv and tried native resolution from my computer. Despite the large diagonal compared to mainstream computer monitors, still tiny tiny text. Had to sit at about a metre from the screen, and swivel my head up down left right. Not ideal. And scaling rather defeats the purpose, for me (mainly coding, so text). I'll stick to my 27" 2560x1440 on the desktop.

That's what I wondered. Also for programming (and reading and writing documentation) I find my current setup limiting. I sit about 80cm from a

24" 1920x1200 monitor which I bought in 2008. Whether I use a Raspberry Pi or an IA PC an upgrade is due.

Notwithstanding what you said about scaling, in your case couldn't the size of the text be increased such that you got more on the screen than you do now but it was still comfortable to read? And wouldn't a curved screen help? After all, people use two monitors side by side and have to turn their heads to do so.

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James Harris

If I went for a Pi 4 as desktop I would cover much of that with an SSD, UPS and temperature-controlled fan.

What's this about a new 'Power Pi' and/or 8GB Pi4 later in the year? Wishful thinking?

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James Harris

I was running a TV as a server monitor ...it was awful. HDMI lag was about 500ms which made using a mouse very hard, and the writing was way too small. Even selecting Big Text on the desktop configs...

--
"I guess a rattlesnake ain't risponsible fer bein' a rattlesnake, but ah  
puts mah heel on um jess the same if'n I catches him around mah chillun".

I often wish that the Next had made display-postscript take off. Text sizes should be measured in points and be completely independent of resolution. I have a laptop with a 4K 15.6" screen and when I look at the font and display settings they make no sense.

--
Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays 
C:\>WIN                                     | A better way to focus the sun 
The computer obeys and wins.                |    licences available see 
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Quality or lag was not a problem for me. The tv does have a dedicated computer mode, maybe that made the difference.

Yes, but what I meant was: I'm sure I can scale the text to some legible size, but then no more text will fit on the 4k monitor than on the lower resolution one.