For what it is worth, I have a bench with 2 SBC’s but just one kbd & monitor.
One SBC is a VF2 / 8Gb with a patriot 256G nvme.
The other is a Pi4 / 4Gb with a USB3 ssd.
I ‘kvm’ between them by unplugging/plugging the USB/HDMI in as appropriate. Both plug into the same network router and run I3, I keep them well updated.
I really cannot tell the difference between them in use…
They ‘feel’ very similar when used via SSH shell or directly on the GUI, the VF2 is faster with disk operations for sure, and the PI computes faster, but the differences are marginal, and both are nice to use as workshop workhorses.
Both of them run OctoPrint for my 3d printers, which gives a nice demonstration of the differences.
- Both systems run it with ease, error free and in the background with minimal resource use, even when printing.
- The VF2 installs Octoprint, via
pip, plus its upgrades, dependencies and plugins noticeably faster than the Pi4 does. - The Pi4 imports and analyses uploaded files noticeably faster than the VF2.
The gcode is processed to flag errors, out of bounds movement and estimated print time. - Both of them can connect to either of the Octoprint local servers via firefox, and the WebUI UI experience is fully functional, but somewhat laggy, on both.
imho; the ‘owen’ benchmark is that both are indistinguishable in real-world use, somewhat slow but very impressive for a fraction the price of the 8 core i7 machine I’m typing this on.