PoetPhilosopher
Veteran Member
I happen to own multiple PCs. And I'm just really impressed with the Pi 4 as a desktop replacement. I would choose the 2GB Pi 4 with Raspbian over a PC which I own which has Windows 10, a Pentium N3700 processor with integrated graphics, 16GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD, yet still struggles to run much in way of programs.
The Pentium N3700 does have an advantage though. It can run games with better quality graphics, through the GPU. Meaning, technically the GPU is more powerful with the Pentium PC - though with the Pentium, you still only get 30 frames per second and no more frames per second than the Pi in most games, due to apparently the N3700 CPU bottlenecking things.
Windows 10 update sprees also have been known to take a hour each on the Pentium N3700. While forcing an update of everything on the Pi 4, takes under 5 minutes.
I have also tried a laptop with better single-thread performance than the N3700, a laptop with 4GB RAM, Windows 10 and a modern Celeron N4000 chip. There's no comparison, the Pi 4 seems to speed along faster at web performance, somehow. It feels like it's really proving itself a bit more useful than this $179 Celeron laptop.
What all this tells me is that things aren't always as black and white as the reading the numbers on certain limited benchmarks. For example, if you go by Geekbench 4 scores, the Pi 4 would probably score around 2600 points on a proper test, and the Celeron/Pentium processors mentioned tend to score upwards of 3200 points.
What I'm trying to say? I don't want to steer anyone down the wrong course, but in terms of overall responsiveness, I fathom that the Pi 4 *may* perform along the lines of say, something admirable like a very modern laptop Pentium like the N5000, or maybe a desktop Celeron processor.
I should still bring something else up though. The emulation software is too immature right now to really turn the Pi 4 into a better emulation box than the Pi 3B+, you at the very least will have less options compared to the 3B+. But the Pi 4 is a superior desktop replacement compared to older products it directly or indirectly competes with, like the Pi 3B+.
My review scores:
Pi 4 as a desktop replacement for programming, writing, and web browsing:
10/10
Pi 4 as a machine running natively programmed games for it:
8/10
Pi 4 as a emulation box:
5/10
Overall: 6.5/10
The Pentium N3700 does have an advantage though. It can run games with better quality graphics, through the GPU. Meaning, technically the GPU is more powerful with the Pentium PC - though with the Pentium, you still only get 30 frames per second and no more frames per second than the Pi in most games, due to apparently the N3700 CPU bottlenecking things.
Windows 10 update sprees also have been known to take a hour each on the Pentium N3700. While forcing an update of everything on the Pi 4, takes under 5 minutes.
I have also tried a laptop with better single-thread performance than the N3700, a laptop with 4GB RAM, Windows 10 and a modern Celeron N4000 chip. There's no comparison, the Pi 4 seems to speed along faster at web performance, somehow. It feels like it's really proving itself a bit more useful than this $179 Celeron laptop.
What all this tells me is that things aren't always as black and white as the reading the numbers on certain limited benchmarks. For example, if you go by Geekbench 4 scores, the Pi 4 would probably score around 2600 points on a proper test, and the Celeron/Pentium processors mentioned tend to score upwards of 3200 points.
What I'm trying to say? I don't want to steer anyone down the wrong course, but in terms of overall responsiveness, I fathom that the Pi 4 *may* perform along the lines of say, something admirable like a very modern laptop Pentium like the N5000, or maybe a desktop Celeron processor.
I should still bring something else up though. The emulation software is too immature right now to really turn the Pi 4 into a better emulation box than the Pi 3B+, you at the very least will have less options compared to the 3B+. But the Pi 4 is a superior desktop replacement compared to older products it directly or indirectly competes with, like the Pi 3B+.
My review scores:
Pi 4 as a desktop replacement for programming, writing, and web browsing:
10/10
Pi 4 as a machine running natively programmed games for it:
8/10
Pi 4 as a emulation box:
5/10
Overall: 6.5/10
