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I am trying to find raw benchmark numbers between any fairly modern desktop processor and the Raspberry Pi 4gb/8gb, but I am struggling to do so.

I understand that there are architectural differences meaning that some benchmarks can not be run on both an x86 instruction set and an Arm based instruction set.

What I hope to determine from the raw performance numbers is if the Pi 4 is powerful enough to replace a dual/quad core desktop CPU based VPS with a similar amount of RAM.

techxz
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  • Consider using Pi's for specific purposes as an "appliance". examples include simple servers like DNS/PiHole, or a VPN gateway, or perhaps running Kodi for a home theatre. They are not really general purpose multi-use systems, – Frank Thomas Aug 21 '20 at 03:52
  • @mokubai IMHO, none of your links really speak to this question - they don't refer to a chipset simolar to that in the Pi4, nor do they provide a metric on how to do such a comparison. Your X86 vs rm link is a 10 year old question. – davidgo Aug 21 '20 at 10:18
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    see a real benchmark here: [How A Raspberry Pi 4 Performs Against Intel's Latest Celeron, Pentium CPUs](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raspberry) – phuclv Aug 23 '20 at 00:32
  • A Pi 4 can be 6 times slower than a modern CPU, when considering pure CPU performance: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/114144/pi-4-performance-against-x86-ci-cd-server-with-java-maven . I still find this impressive. – The Impaler Dec 26 '20 at 04:01
  • I wrote a program in C to count the of palindromic numbers between a lower and upper limit and compiled it on a desktop PC (i7 4790, 16 GB RAM, Debian 9) and a Raspberry Pi 4, 8 GB RAM, and got a speed ratio of 4 to 1. – Michael Harvey Nov 11 '21 at 20:29

1 Answers1

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It's NOT. You can use a Pi for entry level computing and basic web browsing, but it's limited.

Pis are remarkable for what they are, but their CPU performance is a fraction of a desktop CPU (and it's not an Arm vs x86 thing). A Pi4 is apparently slightly slower than an Atom x5-Z8350 - which puts it at a "Passmark" speed of broadly 900. And that's probably about right; an order of 3 times the speed of the ancient Pentium 4 workhorse. A typical entry level x86 CPU would have a Passmark speed of 3 times that.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1540169 compares the Pi4 against the x5-z8350 - The x5-z8350 is an entry level CPU from quarter 1, 2016.

I've not used a Pi much but have used other embedded boards and you need to watch out for things like disk IO - especially if you are relying on an SD card.

Stephan Henningsen
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davidgo
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    Its worth having a read of https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/raspberry-pi-4 which comes to not dissimilar (but slightly more optimistic) ones to what I deduced above. – davidgo Aug 21 '20 at 03:59