What's up everybody? I've been using
raspberry PI's for various projects for
years. Ever since the release of the
Raspberry Pi 3, I've wanted just a little
bit more. A little bit more power, a
little bit more speed, and a few more
options. Now that the Raspberry Pi
foundation has released the new
Raspberry Pi 3 model b+,
I wanted to dive into the specifics and do
a side-by-side comparison of the B
against the B+. Stay tuned!
Let's start with the basics - the new
Raspberry Pi 3 B+ comes with a quad-core
64-bit processor at 1.4 gigahertz. That's
a 10% increase from the older model B,
which already had a solid 1.2 gigahertz
quad-core processor. The new B+ model
also has 1 gigabyte of RAM, four 2 USB 2.0
ports, a stereo output jack, a full-sized
HDMI port, CSI and DSi ports for cameras
and displays, a 40 pin GPIO header block,
and a beefy 2.5 amp power source limit.
But what are the biggest differences? The
new PI 3 B+ comes with dual band Wi-Fi
at 2.4 and 5 gigahertz including 802.11
80.11-B, G, N as well as AC in addition to
Bluetooth 4.2 BLE. It also comes with
Gigabit Ethernet on the USB 2.0 bus
allowing for transfer speeds of up to
300 megabits per second. Lastly my
favorite feature - Power over Ethernet
using an optional hat that sits on the
GPIO header port. You get a full-blown
power supply with a power output of 5
volts and 2.5 amps to drive your PI as
well as its accessories. This will
finally allow the Raspberry Pi to be
used as a fully standalone solution in
industrial grade systems. so what do we
do now? Let's compare the units
side-by-side! On the Left, we have the new
model B+. On the right, we have the
original PI 3 model B. There are some
noticeable differences on the board
layout itself. The B+ has fewer visible
components, the overall layout is much
cleaner, and as a whole it feels a lot
less delicate. I'm using Samsung Evo 32
gigabyte SD cards for testing on both
Raspberry Pi units. I'm using noobs 2.7
for both units as well. After inserting
the SD cards, I plugged in the two power
cords. The power was supplied by a Rigol
lab grade bench power supply so I could
accurately measure the power drawn by
each unit as well as turn them on
simultaneously for boot time testing. I
also plugged in two computer monitors. I
first booted them one by one to install
raspbian using the noobs 2.7 installer.
The old Raspberry Pi model B took about
23 minutes, with the new Raspberry Pi
model B plus taking a bit more than 10
minutes to install Raspbian.
With everything installed I flipped on
the power to both Raspberry Pi units at
the same time to see which booted faster.
Overall, the boot times are roughly the
same - plus or minus a second or two.
Sometimes the new model boots minimally
faster, sometimes the old model does.
Generally performance appears to be
similar - maybe a bit faster on the B+ - and
overall performance, but nothing too
significant when used as a general
desktop computer with Raspbian. Watching YouTube is poor on both units.
LibreOffice writer works well in both,
and Minecraft definitely runs better on
the newer unit over the older one. As a
command line only system, you would
probably be able to notice the extra 10%
processor power just a little bit more.
However, with a full GUI, it's negligible. The biggest difference between the two units
that I found was an SD card write times.
The older model B average is about 5.8MB/s
whereas the B+ average is 16.8 MB/s and
write times. That's nearly three times
the write performance on the same SD
card from one unit to the next. Read
times for the model B averaged out at
around 21MB/s for both
models, leaving read times at what's
essentially a tie. You can also see the
B+ outperforms in the 4k readwrite
scenarios as displayed on the screen. So
what does this mean for you as the end
user well? It really depends if you're
the average person who's using a
Raspberry Pi for a home project, probably
not all that much. If you've got a dozen
of these things spread around your home
or office all connected via Wi-Fi and
powered by USB? It might be worth looking at the upgrades to the Pi B+ if you need
better Wi-Fi performance or you want to
move to Power over Ethernet for combined
network and power for simplicity sake. In
the end, if you're the average home user
and use it as a desktop you might not
see the immediate benefits over the
Raspberry Pi model B that you currently
have in place. If you're a hardware
developer that focuses on rapid
prototyping or embedded projects? No
question go with the B+ it's a lot more
efficient with power consumption, offers
a wider range of connectivity options,
and has much better write times.
Whichever you choose, they're both
fantastic products that will surely do
you well in whatever embedded projects
you happen to be working on. Coming up,
we'll be reviewing two other products
associated with the Raspberry Pi product
line - the seven inch touchscreen display
and the Element 14 Pi Desktop enclosure.
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