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Comment by schappim | Hacker News Reader

What has changed:

- Wifi Built-in

    - IEEE 802.11b/g/n support
    - A maximum transmit and receive rate of 150 Mbps
    - Supports both 20 MHz and 40 MHz channels
    - Supports Infrastructure mode, Wi-Fi Direct and soft-AP mode
    - Supports WPA, WPA2 (802.11i), AES/TKIP, IEEE 802.1X and WAPI
    - A maximum transmission power 15 dbm
    - Operating Frequency 2.4 MHz – 2.497 MHz

- Bluetooth Built-in

- New System on chip (BCM2837 reported to be 1.5x speed of previous gen)

- Chip is now 64bit ARMv8 QUAD Core 64bit processor

- MicroSD Card swapped out. Not more annoying spring ejection system that breaks.

- Position of status LEDs has changed (there is a chip antenna where they used to be).

- New power switching for 2.5Amp power supply.

What is the same:

- Same USB/Ethernet controller

- Same form factor

- Same GPIO

Source (with images): http://raspberry.piaustralia.com.au/raspberry-pi-3-model-b-c...

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Thanks for the detailed summary.

> Same GPIO

To clarify, this means exactly the same GPIO capabilities (no extras like analog inputs, etc), as opposed to full GPIO compatibility with previous generations?

Also, any idea when documentation for the new SoC will be released (i.e. the equivalent of this, for the bcm2837: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...)? Said documentation could, of course, answer the above question, but I can't find any yet.

Exactly the same capabilities, though very low-level code might notice a difference because the main UART is now used for Bluetooth, so the GPIOs use the mini-UART which is apparently affected by overclocking.

I'm so happy it has builtin wifi. No more finicky dodgy USB dongles that get lost!

No kidding, it was otherwise such a simple thing to tuck away and use even for GPIO/breadboarding projects, but then you had to find one or two dongles to handle wifi/bluetooth turning the whole thing from handheld to a cluster of wires, dongles and connectors.

Massive improvement if that was all that happened.

It is still a cluster of wires - hdmi, power, usb, audio. USB WiFi & BT dongles are as small as 5mm outside the socket.

Is the audio any good? Would it compete on the level of an airport express?

Actually (unrelated to Pi 3), audio was recently improved in an experimental driver.

From the engineer who worked on it:

> I reimplemented the original PWM-based 11-bit audio @48kHz as 7-bit 2nd-order Sigma-Delta modulated at 781.25kHz. The effective noise floor with this scheme approximates that of CD-quality audio DACs.

from the forums https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1364...

That is a superlative discovery, and extremely intriguing. Thank you for sharing it!

No, the audio by default is pretty crap. There are several add-on daughterboards/hats available that use the i2s port to give better audio.

Yup, RPI's internal audio sounds rather dull, which you might not notice until you buy an external DAC :D.

The RPI can do great audio out of the box without USB, just don't use the 3.5mm jack. Instead, remember that HDMI does uncompressed bitstream audio!

You can connect the RPI to a dac/amp with HDMI input or a digital audio extractor. The best quality will be found by connecting to an HDMI to SPDIF extractor and then running that into a good quality DAC.

The nice thing about this solution is that you're not dependent on the horrible and CPU-sucking USB offered by the RPI.

How to connect a single hdmi cable to a monitor AND an amp?

HDMI amplifiers, DACs, and audio extractors (which give a clean digital bitstream on SPDIF) provide an HDMI output. The output HDMI will continue to carry the video portion of the signal and usually (if not always) the audio stream as well.

That is a nice hack! I'm going to have to plug the HDMI port into my stereo amp and try this out.

If it's the same as the previous models: no, the audio of the Raspberry Pi is pretty rudimentary (it uses PWM) [1]. However, you can use an external DAC to improve this.

[1] http://www.crazy-audio.com/2014/07/sound-quality-of-the-rasp...

A couple of years ago I bought a Raspberry Pi 2 to use as a music server. However, when playing through a Benchmark USB DAC I hear pops and clicks in the audio. Instead I bought a Cubox and use its Toslink output which works perfectly. Does anyone know if the USB audio issue have been fixed in the third version of the Raspberry Pi?

I had no problems with the first Raspberry Pi and a fiio e10k USB DAC.

Did the same and had clicks with a different USB DAC. I'm waiting to hear whether this one works too!

Connecting the analog audio of the RPi (1B) to my receiver causes the receiver's CPU to slow down to the point where it is unusable! It looks like the RPi puts out a DC-biased signal, and the receiver is seriously lacking input robustness. The two devices were also connected via HDMI, ruling out ground issues.

I've since moved the music setup to also use HDMI (the DAC in the receiver is bound to be better anyway), but sheesh, be warned.

How on earth do you know what your receiver's CPU is doing?

The UI slows down gradually until the whole thing is unresponsive, reproducibly. IIRC disconnect the analog input, and the UI picks right back up.

I've no idea if it's a priority interrupt firing too much, body diode current weirdness, or some thermal issue. And I'm certainly not going to keep teasing the fault to figure it out.

Yeah, wow. That's wacky.

    MicroSD Card swapped out. Not more annoying spring ejection system that breaks.

What does this mean? I didn't see anything about this in the announcement.

The cardholder used to be a push-to-eject type, but apparently this was unpopular. Sometimes failing to eject, sometimes too easy to trigger (since it's protruding and not recessed in casework). Now it's just a friction fit.

That's interesting. The original Pi was a friction fit (full-size SD card), but that was unpopular, so they switched to the spring-eject system for Micro-SD. Seems they cannot make up their minds which one they prefer.

According to the third post on this forum thread [1] they don't do fat channels so WiFi is limited to 20 MHz / 72 Mbit/s.

The CPU is Cortex-A53. Cache sizes reportedly same as on the Pi 2, 32K data + 32K code + 512K level 2. RAM still 1Gbyte 900MHz.

[1] https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=1379...

2.5A? That fills me with worry, as i have yet to see one of those that do not assume the device will be Apple, and thus implement their signaling on the data pins.

The original quote is: "This time round, we’re recommending a 2.5A adapter if you want to connect power-hungry USB devices to the Raspberry Pi."

Sounds like you'll be find if you use the original 2A power supply and NOT connect power hungry stuff.

Yeah, AdaFruit¹ seems to agree:

“Lastly, there’s an upgraded switched power source that goes up to 2.5 Amps instead of just 2 Amps - allowing your Pi to power even more powerful devices over USB ports.

Note: Our 5V 2A power supply still works great with the Pi 3. For most uses, you don't need 2.5 amps of power and our 5V2A supply should be sufficient.”

Still, it would be nice if they did make/source a generic USB wall adapter that can supply 2.5 A of current. Hopefully, this new Raspberry Pi will increase the demand for such a thing.

――――――

¹ — https://www.adafruit.com/product/3055

They do; it's a 2.5A, 5.1V adaptor. I've ordered one myself (from here: http://au.rs-online.com/web/p/plug-in-power-supply/9098135/?...)

previously you'd have had a wifi dongle in one slot, plus then maybe mouse and keyboard... likely to be fine with the same power supply for the same use cases as before. Don't try and run your christmas tree off it.

No mention of the amount of RAM anywhere.

1GB of LPDDR2-900, the same as before.

Thats too bad, Odroid C2 has 2GB ram (and is 4x a53 @2ghz, with gige) and is only $5 more list.

(And, if you compare with prices in stores that have it available, is actually cheaper).

Unless what was typed is not true, I disagree with the downvotes. I'm someone thinking about getting a pi and I find information on alternatives helpful in making my decision.

There is also Orange Pi Plus 2 with 2GB RAM, 1.6GHz, WiFi, SATA, GbEth for $49.

Too bad it still doesn't have SATA, USB3 and Gigabit Ethernet.But this is already big step forward, wifi, bluetooth and a better cpu for the same price. The next generation will look even more promising. Currently I am just using my obsolete wifi dongle for my rasp

> Too bad it still doesn't have SATA, USB3 and Gigabit Ethernet.

It costs $35 and comes with ethernet, wifi, and a quad-core processor.

Furthermore, it's fully supported in linux.

That's terribly awesome for what it is.

A decade ago you had to spend 50x that amount of cash to get a laptop with those specs, without linux support.

No matter how you cut it, the Raspberry Pi 3 is not bad from any angle. At all.

>That's terribly awesome for what it is.

Truly awesome, yes indeed .. and from my perspective, completely out of left-field. Fact is, this kind of evolution rewards those who invest in the platform, and is definitely a key indicator of a successful platform strategy, wherein the benefits of standardization and compatibility, applied along Moorse curve, results in the platform becoming more and more useful. Really great that they're able to maintain the price-point, the form-factor, GPIO compatibility, and so on; all the while pushing the platform into "workstation-class" territory, bit by bit.

The only thing that would make it better .. truly, the only thing .. is if we had the ability to go up to 16gigs of RAM. RAM is lacking, but still the machine is awesome. (I'll just assume that the next $35 investment in the rPi dream that I'll make, will fix this issue..)

I've ordered rPi 3, I'm a true believer, for it to sit atop a bundle of stacks of every other rPi released so far .. and, it seems, the rPi revolution is beneficial to everyone.

I mean, this class of workstation device, for a Linux desktop system, for .. ~$50 worth of investment .. phenomenal!

I hope we see more stuff like this, and it forces the mobile power-horses to re-consider bundling the compiler onboard.

Fun Fact: with this new rev of rPi, I can develop software for the fleet-of-rPi's like never before, i.e. it'll be usable enough to just ditch the cross-compiler and other bunk needed to maintain dominance in a tech-soaked garden of various walls, smokes and mirrors .. so instead of giving my customers an App-store link this year, I think I'll just put the working system in the mail.

Bonanza!

> The only thing that would make it better .. truly, the only thing .. is if we had the ability to go up to 16gigs of RAM.

Yeah, I keep thinking about how a tiny device with oodles of RAM would be such a killer Redis or static asset server. Or even a killer database server, for read-heavy loads.

Although am not even sure if that would be possible in the near future - for SoC's like the BCM2837, the RAM is on the same chip as the CPU+GPU, right? I don't even know if it would be feasible to build gobs of RAM into a package like that.

Of course, RPi's are still freaking awesome, and I am happy they exist.

No, the RAM is a separate chip. On the BCM2835 devices they use a package-on-package arrangement so on casual inspection they look like the same chip. On the Pi 2 and Pi 3 the RAM is on the bottom of the board.

There is apparently an architectural limit in the Videocore 4 that limits it to 1Gbyte.

I'm not sayings its a bad deal, I just personally hoped for usb 3.0 or sata for faster connected IO, or gigabit ethernet for faster remote IO

You probably want a computer designed around performance instead of "community". Check out the Odroid C2. It's got a 64 bit quad core CPU (just* like the Pine and RPi3) but clocked at 2GHz. And has real gigabit. And has twice as much ram. And can drive a 4k screen comfortably. Sadly no USB3. You can get that, but in boards that cost $70.

The C2 goes on sale in like one or two days for $40. (edit: You can buy in now on HK's website.) Kind of a childish move for the RPi Foundation to be making so much noise about their new board right now, actually. (edit: Okay, benbenben makes a fair and accurate point. Several boards, including the first, have been released at the end of February.)

* Not entirely just like. It's an Amlogic chip instead of Broadcom or Allwinner. Amlogic is one of the few without blatant GPL abuse.

"Kind of a childish move for the RPi Foundation to be making so much noise about their new board right now, actually."

It's their fourth birthday, a pretty good time to release a new/updated product, no?

1st birthday?

True, my bad.

odroid? you forgot $20 shipping for $40 board.

Only if you order directly from Korea. Normally you buy from a distributor. For example, Ameridroid will be shipping the C2 on March 4th and their fee is $6.75.

The machine is also likely not fast enough to take advantage of those speeds

Yeah, if you run iperf3 on a raspi, it can't even saturate it's 100Mbps connection!

Yup = Built in Bluetooth and WIFI is great ... really would love SATA and USB3 in a future version..

> It costs $35 and comes with ethernet, wifi, and a quad-core processor.

That's not all that much of a differentiator. The Banana Pi Pro only costs $12.89 more on Amazon. It doesn't have built-in wifi and it's dual- instead of quad-core, but it does have real SATA and better video. If I weren't perfectly happy with the Odroid U3 I've been using as a Linux desktop for the last couple of years, I'd probably lean toward that instead of the RP3, but that's not the point. The point is that SATA would be a nice addition, and not unreasonable at this approximate price point, even if the RP3 is already awesome.

If it had all those things it would be a PC, with a price tag to match. If you need those things, build a PC.

The Orange Pi 2 Plus has sata and about the same price

SATA via USB though?

http://linux-sunxi.org/Xunlong_Orange_Pi_Plus#SATA

Exactly. And limited to 15MB/s writes.

I made the mistake once of buying an orange pi. I thought, hey, this has better specs, so its better.

I was wrong. Horrible support, 2 of the usb ports never worked. The community is non existent compared to rpi.

I haven't seen anything with directly connected SATA outside of iMX6 boards, and the pins aren't always connected. What did the Ax0 based Cubieboards use?

The original Cubieboards used on-chip AHCI SATA controllers. Allwinner dropped it from their newer chips, presumably because they're targeting tablet use and there's no need for them.

Olimex boards have a direct SATA connection. This is on a Lime-A10 with a cheap 2.5" 1TB drive, about 70% full so some fragmentation etc:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=6G bs=1M count=6144

6144+0 records in

6144+0 records out

6442450944 bytes (6.4 GB) copied, 136.176 s, 47.3 MB/s

# dd if=6G of=/dev/null bs=1M

6144+0 records in

6144+0 records out

6442450944 bytes (6.4 GB) copied, 93.6363 s, 68.8 MB/s

Also they have a nice battery connector, they'll keep the battery charged and switch to it if main power fails (and even keep the SATA drive powered (not sure if you plug a 3.5" one, though)).

Is native sata that much better than a usb3 adapter? All of the chips that offered sata were SATA 2.0, or 300MB/s. USB3 goes up to 625MB/s.

If a board with SATA 3.0 existed, that is still just 600MB/s.

The Banana Pi Pro (not the regular Banana Pi) is the only one I know of that has real SATA.

Allwinner A20 has directly connected SATA.

pretty sure the CPU could not even remotely saturate USB3 or Gigabit Ethernet

And still so many people choose it as file server...

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