09-08-2019, 02:08 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-21-2019, 02:04 PM by Brian Beuken.)
I was hoping to get my hands on a Vim3 with the impressive A311D but though they were kind to respond to my mail, they didn't send me a free example and as its over my $100 limit I couldn't buy it. It currently tips the scale at $99 but when you factor in a heatsink it tips it over...
But they have announced a half price Vim3L version with the S905 chip which they had originally intended to use, its missing a few other bits, but I probably wouldn't have used them anyway.
So I've preordered and will wait and see.
I've always liked the Vim2 I have, its quite a processing beast and actually emulates ES2 better than any other system I have, but like a lot of higher end boards it lacks access to the GPU, I suspect the same here but we will see when it arrives. It'll be a few months.
oops edit... no, the original Vim3 chip was a S922 which is/was a hexacore chip but they switched to the A311D and that also pushed the price up a bit. The S905 is the same quad core you find in the Odroid C2, a powerful chip for sure, better than the Pi3B but not as impressive as the S922... So this should be compared with the C2 and Pi3B in terms of performance, I suspect it will match the C2 but fall behind the 3B, we'll see when it arrives. But one thing, the C2 has a strong community behind it and I "think" it has GPU drivers, I need to dig mine out and update it to see. So it may actually be a more useful dev target than the full Vim3 is... time, as always will tell.
But they have announced a half price Vim3L version with the S905 chip which they had originally intended to use, its missing a few other bits, but I probably wouldn't have used them anyway.
So I've preordered and will wait and see.
I've always liked the Vim2 I have, its quite a processing beast and actually emulates ES2 better than any other system I have, but like a lot of higher end boards it lacks access to the GPU, I suspect the same here but we will see when it arrives. It'll be a few months.
oops edit... no, the original Vim3 chip was a S922 which is/was a hexacore chip but they switched to the A311D and that also pushed the price up a bit. The S905 is the same quad core you find in the Odroid C2, a powerful chip for sure, better than the Pi3B but not as impressive as the S922... So this should be compared with the C2 and Pi3B in terms of performance, I suspect it will match the C2 but fall behind the 3B, we'll see when it arrives. But one thing, the C2 has a strong community behind it and I "think" it has GPU drivers, I need to dig mine out and update it to see. So it may actually be a more useful dev target than the full Vim3 is... time, as always will tell.
Brian Beuken
Lecturer in Game Programming at Breda University of Applied Sciences.
Author of The Fundamentals of C/C++ Game Programming: Using Target-based Development on SBC's
Lecturer in Game Programming at Breda University of Applied Sciences.
Author of The Fundamentals of C/C++ Game Programming: Using Target-based Development on SBC's