bmlw

It is, though these 2 boards are the closest in terms of specifications "on paper" as they both offer a single 1GHz core, 512MB of RAM (unless you go for the 1GB MQ Pro) etc. Comparing it to the RPi Zero 2 felt a bit pointless in a standalone head-to-head piece. There'll be a separate post in a few weeks comparing all of the "zero" style boards from the various vendors that may give you what you're looking for!

You have so many options! I have Raspberry, Banana, Mango and Orange Pi boards sat here. NanoPi, Rock Pi, Radxa, Beaglebone etc all have alternatives available too.

Hah, it does! Though the 2 production runs they've done sold out pretty quickly. I think some 3rd party stores on AliExpress snapped some up and are reselling them, though if you follow their official twitter (@mangopi_sbc) they post their official page when there's more stock. They recently posted a picture of new boards being manufactured so there's hope!

This is all so interesting. I've not touched game servers for 6-7 years but boy am I glad that things have progressed somewhat!

If it was you that purchased the 3 then thank you so much! I should be able to get those and the others I had arrive in the last week added over the weekend. I'll post an update here (if I don't get banned for it? :D) as this will be another 500+ benchmark runs over another 10 cards.

I'll call it a day on performance testing at that point and put a group of them to the test endurance wise then!

eMMC sure, but I only added that as a comparison as it was there. This was mainly targeted at the SD card side of things. This post was to show the performance of microSD cards in these specific SBCs, it wasn't a test of the eMMC.

The same place I found the Raspberry Pi 1/Model B? In my cupboard :D I didn't go out and purchase everything brand new for this post. I used what I had available to me! I often see these 2GB models pop up on our local version of eBay and they're out there. Does the newer version have a different SD card reader or other hardware that will render the results pointless in a comparison with it? (Genuine question!)

As the other guy pointed out, I'm doing this in my spare time with hardware I had or was able to procure quickly/at a decent price (this isn't sponsored, sadly!) I don't have many Samsung cards at this time but I'm looking into my options. I already have 4 cards that I'm almost finished with speed testing (SanDisk MAX ENDURANCE, Integra Ultima PRO, Patriot EP and a Kodak model) and will source more as and when I'm able to :)

I'm not sure if you're offering to purchase some to have their results added? You really don't have to, but I've created a list to help me keep track of which cards I don't have and wouldn't mind testing at https://www.amazon.se/hz/wishlist/ls/7JG01YVBN93M - I'll add other brands later but this is a good way to keep track of things and monitor prices anyway!

This is actually part of my worry too and I bought 2 units (of the 2x64GB) from the UK and Swedish sites and both are showing up as the same manufacturer etc. Would definitely like to hear from others that have them though to see how consistent things are over in North America.

No need to worry, I often feel like what I'm doing is a waste of time. I do agree with what someone else said though as I feel like whilst the sequential reads and writes on most boards are largely the same, the random reads/writes are a little more varied and this may be what people are looking for. In either case, if a £5 card performs largely the same as a £15 card, I'd say it was worth doing for the money savings. Whether that £5 card will last as long as the £15 one is a different matter but hopefully with some of the other tests I'm doing, we'll find out!

I started that testing around a week ago! Will hopefully have enough data for a post in the coming weeks but it's a bit easier to test for speed first and before you kill cards :D

Thanks for your comment. I'm not sure if just leaving them as is and letting the reader decide how they want to interpret/read the results would be better? I'm doing these mainly out of my own curiosity in my endless free time at the moment and I'm new to creating content like this so I'm open to feedback!

Hi! I'm the guy that tested these and I hear you, as I mentioned at the bottom of the post, I'm currently working on stress testing some of the cards through a series of sequential read/write and random IO tests and as soon as I have enough data to justify the post, I shall be putting it up. I don't have a Samsung endurance card, though I'm testing a SanDisk MAX ENDURANCE card in this round.