I really like that the ports aren’t spread across every edge of the board. That plus the mounting holes will make it a lot easier to build enclosures for the pi. Not having the SD card stick out the side is a plus too, although it is a little annoying to have to go back and buy micro SD cards now.
I really like that the power consumption figure was dropped to a watt, as that is how much power most cellphone chargers can reliably deliver now. Power supplies are a constant headache for new Pi users. I hope the USB controller is less touchy now too. I am disappointed that they couldn’t even bump the clock speed on the CPU though, the Pi has always been a bit pokey. Being still suck on the ancient ARM7 architecture is totally lame too.
Yeah! for a new Rapsberry Pi - Meh! that I’m one of the few people who bought the very first model (the one with 256MB RAM) I preordered half a year in advance
I use it as a versatile automatic downloader and dlna server and I also wished for a faster CPU with the new model …
Newer versions of Raspbian have made overclocking more or less official. It’s right there when you do the initial setup now. I’ve found that bumping the clock to 1Ghz helps it a lot more than you would think. Even though it’s only 300 extra Mhz, it feels twice as fast. I think the memory clock gets bumped as well, which makes a big difference. The only downside is that it gets warmer, but using the built-in temp monitor mine never goes above 60C despite being inside a stuffy box. The chip is rated up to 90C I think and there is some built-in monitoring on Raspbian (caveat: have not checked other distros) to throttle it back if it runs too hot.
I do have a -B model with 512MB of RAM though, and even that feels tight. 256 is not enough for what the little box can do.
Still, it’s been a couple of years, the very least they could do is bump the base clock to 1Ghz, even if they aren’t going to move to a more modern ARM processor. The GPU is still the same old PowerVR monstrosity too. There’s a tradeoff with these little SBCs. You can go with a different company and get something much more capable, but at the cost of the large community of users and peripherals designed specifically for the Pi. You’ll be the one debugging weird issues instead of finding someone else who has already hit it and figured out the solution 3 years ago.
I expect that to be doubtful. It’s still using the same BCM2835 system on a chip that is my biggest complaint about the Rev. B.
I remember being one of the guys pounding the servers when the first sales went live. Didn’t manage to actually get my hands on one for another three months due to the back-order situation. And, yup, 256K. I heartily agree with the need for a faster processor, but at least you are allowed to overclock without voiding your warranty.
I would imagine that the storage interface (SD card) is a bigger performance bottleneck that the CPU for general use, however. It is on my list of things to do to eventually install the OS to a fast USB drive and just use the SD for booting.
I might have to pick one of these new models up.
One thing they have done is redesign the power controller to make it less likely to brownout the board when you plug in any random USB device. The Pi is the only device I’ve ever worked with that can’t handle hotplugging USB.
I can’t wait for one of these (by whatever company) to get to the point where they’re entirely viable as full 1080p/10bit media players. So close… so very close…
The USB transfer speed is atrocious if you’re using the ethernet port.
That definitely would be nice. Probably not nice enough for me to upgrade, since I’ve already got a powered hub and never hot plug items, but definitely nice.
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