Summary
makes it fair to directly compare the two to see whether you may want to consider this board for more intense computing purposes.
There’s also a written summary of the results and details in a GitHub issue, though the direct comparison with the Raspberry Pi 5 is in the video.
Although this Qualcomm SoC isn’t new, its primary use is for Windows laptops, which gives somewhat of a hint as to what its performance may be like, tempered by the fact that it was announced in 2021.
The Dragon QXB offers about 2x everything over the RPi5, plus Windows and UEFI support. For Linux, it appears that you still need customized images, which seems perplexing in light of the UEFI aspect. You also have to pick between different Linux images from Radxa and use their Rsetup update tool, making it a less than newbie-friendly offering.
The Radxa-provided Linux experience is somewhat choppy. Raw performance in e.g., Geekbench 6 multi-core shows why you’d want to use this SBC, as it triples the RPi5 score. Power efficiency is also better, with [Jeff]’s HPL efficiency showing 3.73 Gflops/W versus 2.75 for the RPi5. There are twin 2.5 Gbit Ethernet ports and more PCIe too, all of which can really be used by the raw CPU power.
This means that there’s a lot to like about this Q8B SBC. [Jeff] expresses his appreciation for it, despite issues with the Radxa UEFI BIOS. It feels like Radxa is still trying to work out the BIOS-related kinks, which might even allow for the installation of generic OS images, rather than their own images.
Per the documentation, the SBC comes in a range of RAM sizes, from 4 to 32 GB, so you can still get a cheaper version too, if you can find one for sale. As noted in the video, these SBCs are still pretty scarce, and as the AI-induced personal computing and SBC collapse continues, this situation is unlikely to improve.
“making it a less than ewbie-friendly offering.”
We’re letting sheep do software development now?
baaaaaad joke :D Article has been fixed already
Radxa may get a lot right on the hardware side, but they get a lot wrong on the software side.
Par for the course for almost all ‘Raspi killers’, and why the Raspberry Pi still reigns supreme. Their software support and documentation is unparalleled.
Yet another board that needs a custom linux build. And does it poorly.
At this point if it isn’t supported by armbian, it doesn’t exist as far as I’m concerned.
Raxda hardware might be great value, but their software support is truly awful. They only ship horribly bloated, out-of-date vendor images and do nothing to support new Linux kernels (and good luck if you want BSD). Their documentation is bare-bones as well. I own an E24C as a server/router and would not go with them again.
These, and some research I did with AI, was the kind of info I wanted after I read “For Linux, it appears that you still need customized images, which seems perplexing in light of the UEFI aspect.”
Wish that was fleshed out more in the article.
This is something still being worked on by Radxa; sadly a lot of discussion happens on Discord, so it can’t easily be tracked elsewhere, but I did open this issue, which has two updated BIOSes posted so far: https://forum.radxa.com/t/usb-issues-in-bios-on-q8b/31582/9
I wonder if armbian will be able to pick up support. Probably comes down to kernal support…