Not buying so many boards

I've slowed right down on my buying of new boards, though in truth there has not been too many to buy, at least that interest me or are sub $100

There's a couple of interesting Orange Pi 4 variants out but as they are not quite pocket money prices, and I know they almost certainly won't have drivers I am reluctant to fork out for them, but I probably will if I hear they do have drivers.

I've been spending more time getting back to coding on systems and updating various demo's to use the Pi4's X11 systems which also opens up most of the other X11 systems to use.
but I did buy or get given a few boards over the last 6 months or so and found myself working more and more on them.

The board I am most excited about is the Jetson Nano, I got work to buy one for me to experiment with as it has AI as well as graphic uses and we like to play with stuff like that at work its just over my $100 limit but since I didn't pay for it, I include it, as a benchmark if nothing else.

Wow, what a machine, just what a damn machine, incredible power....very easy to get up and running too with a very solid OS, and no messing around with expensive power supplies, though a good solid 3A micro USB is preffered. It just works...


Also of note the RockPro 64 the top of the list as far as RK3399 boards are concerned, Pine were very kind to send me a demo model, its not a small board, but it packs a lot of performance, I will need to try their Rock 64 board soon, which has a smaller Rockchip but should still be on a par with a tinkerboard.



Also donated was another RK3399 board, from Radxa, the RockPi4, hmmm a nice board but missing some performance somewhere as it lags behind other RK3399 boards, but still, after some updates has become a very solid and reliable board



Also of note is the Odroid N2, but its software isn't there yet, its coming though and I'm sure once the XU4 developers start to get a taste for the power this thing has  it will really start to fly, but it is 2x the cost of an XU4, and it still keeps delivering on its most power for the buck promises. I keep updating the N2 hoping to see significant improvements but nothing so far.. CPU is a beast, GPU is really not being fully used and it lags behind even the RockPi4 in terms of GPU performance.

Also in the pot, a strange little Libre system, again on kickstarter, the la frite..an Amlogic 805 system like the Odroid but no where near as reliable

I got the little metal case for it to help its cooling.... its a bit fickle though not really been able to get it to stay stable and boot twice in a row...the website has the worst guides I'ver ever seen, unless you're a guru...don't bother trying this.

Hmmm what else,nope I think thats pretty much it. There's a lot of nice Rockchip systems coming on line the RK3399 chip is especially popular and nearly always has some GPU support on their supplied OS's, I was kinda hoping that the Rpi4 would be based on it, but can't say I'm unhappy with what they produced, I like the connection to Broadcom and even though they'll never be fast they tend to be reliable.

As always some updates and performance issues are listed on my forums at Scratchpadgames.net