Performance Evaluation of Different Raspberry Pi Models for a Broad Spectrum of Interests

Abstract

Now-a-days, Single Board Computers (SBCs), especially Raspberry Pi (RPi) devices, are extensively used due to their low cost, efficient use of energy, and successful implementation in a wide range of applications; therefore, evaluating their performance is critical to better understand the applicability of RPis to solve problems in different areas of knowledge. This paper describes a comparative and experimental study regarding the performance of five different models of the RPi family (RPi Zero W, RPi Zero 2 W, RPi 3B, RPi 3B+, and RPi 4B) in several scenarios and with different configurations. To conduct our multiple experiments on RPis, we used a self-developed and other existing open-source benchmarking tools allowing us to perform tests that mimic real-world needs, assessing important factors including CPU frequency and temperature during stressful activities, processor performance when executing CPU-intensive processes such as audio and file compressions as well as cryptographic operations, memory and microSD storage performance when executing read and write operations, TCP throughput in different WiFi bands, and TCP latency to send a specific payload from a source to a destination. Our experimental results showed that the RPi 4B significantly outperformed the other SBCs tested. In addition, our research indicated that the RPi Zero 2 W overclocked, RPi 3B, and RPi 3B+ had similar performance. Finally, the RPi Zero 2 W showed a much higher capacity than its predecessor, the RPi Zero W, and seems to be a perfect replacement when upgrading, since they have the same form factor and are physically interchangeable. With this study, we aim to guide researchers and hobbyists in selecting adequate RPis for their projects.