It is, though these 2 boards are the closest in terms of specifications "on paper" as they both offer a single 1GHz core, 512MB of RAM (unless you go for the 1GB MQ Pro) etc. Comparing it to the RPi Zero 2 felt a bit pointless in a standalone head-to-head piece. There'll be a separate post in a few weeks comparing all of the "zero" style boards from the various vendors that may give you what you're looking for!
On the one hand I would say that RISC-V SBCs are not yet for anyone who cares only about price. RISC-V cores and SoCs with Linux SBC capability are in an early stage. RISC-V has already taken over a lot of the microcontroller world, based on price and freedom.
On the other hand, I would say that the price of a number of these D1-based RISC-V boards are now within the range of a Pi Zero plus lunch at McDonalds, so if you only want one of them the price difference is basically irrelevant.
A year ago a Pi 3 equivalent RISC-V board (the HiFive Unmatched) cost $665, which was a big drop from 2008's HiFive Unleashed plus MicroSemi expansion board for $2998 total. Since December there's been the VisionFive for about $180 (although with only 2 cores not 4). In a few months there will be the newly-announced Pine64 Star64 with an expected price of $60 with 4 GB RAM or $80 with 8 GB RAM (they've said "about the same price and performance as the Quartz64")
That's pretty rapid price drops.
RISC-V SBCs with considerably better performance than a Pi 4 (similar to the RK3588 boards that just came out a couple of months ago) will be demonstrated working in the next couple of months and probably shipping early next year. They will, again, probably be quite expensive at first, but existing is the hard part. Price is then just a matter of mass production economics.
You have so many options! I have Raspberry, Banana, Mango and Orange Pi boards sat here. NanoPi, Rock Pi, Radxa, Beaglebone etc all have alternatives available too.
So many options and alternatives from all of them, yet the Raspberry Pi has by far the most software support, technical support, documentation and hardware compatibility and updates compared to the alternatives.
From the rest of the other boards it is just one kernel release (if you're lucky, 3 releases) and they have moved on to the latest SBC and dropped support and releases. The Raspberry Pi Foundation still continues to support older boards.
It just seems that with the many Raspberry Pi users, the documentation and the ecosystem built around it seems to be its success rather than the technical specs.
I'm still bummed about the discontinuation of the H2. Every alternative that I've been able to find with comparable specs is at least twice as expensive.
Hah, it does! Though the 2 production runs they've done sold out pretty quickly. I think some 3rd party stores on AliExpress snapped some up and are reselling them, though if you follow their official twitter (@mangopi_sbc) they post their official page when there's more stock. They recently posted a picture of new boards being manufactured so there's hope!
The same place I found the Raspberry Pi 1/Model B? In my cupboard :D I didn't go out and purchase everything brand new for this post. I used what I had available to me! I often see these 2GB models pop up on our local version of eBay and they're out there. Does the newer version have a different SD card reader or other hardware that will render the results pointless in a comparison with it? (Genuine question!)
The BBB Rev B BOM lists a Micron chip that tops out at 30MB/s read and 6.6MB/s write (pretty close to measured).
The BBB Rev C BOM lists Micron chips in that range but also lists chips like the Kingston EMMC04G-M627 which is capable of 250MB/s read and 25 MB/s write.
eMMC sure, but I only added that as a comparison as it was there. This was mainly targeted at the SD card side of things. This post was to show the performance of microSD cards in these specific SBCs, it wasn't a test of the eMMC.
As the other guy pointed out, I'm doing this in my spare time with hardware I had or was able to procure quickly/at a decent price (this isn't sponsored, sadly!) I don't have many Samsung cards at this time but I'm looking into my options. I already have 4 cards that I'm almost finished with speed testing (SanDisk MAX ENDURANCE, Integra Ultima PRO, Patriot EP and a Kodak model) and will source more as and when I'm able to :)
This is actually part of my worry too and I bought 2 units (of the 2x64GB) from the UK and Swedish sites and both are showing up as the same manufacturer etc. Would definitely like to hear from others that have them though to see how consistent things are over in North America.
No need to worry, I often feel like what I'm doing is a waste of time. I do agree with what someone else said though as I feel like whilst the sequential reads and writes on most boards are largely the same, the random reads/writes are a little more varied and this may be what people are looking for. In either case, if a £5 card performs largely the same as a £15 card, I'd say it was worth doing for the money savings. Whether that £5 card will last as long as the £15 one is a different matter but hopefully with some of the other tests I'm doing, we'll find out!
I started that testing around a week ago! Will hopefully have enough data for a post in the coming weeks but it's a bit easier to test for speed first and before you kill cards :D
Thanks for your comment. I'm not sure if just leaving them as is and letting the reader decide how they want to interpret/read the results would be better? I'm doing these mainly out of my own curiosity in my endless free time at the moment and I'm new to creating content like this so I'm open to feedback!
