Orange Pi 5 Review – Powerful, No WiFi

Hey Jesús Vega,

Welcome back! So I don’t have good news about this:

root@orangepi5:~# ./test.sh 0004:40:00.0
Link capabilities: 00726812
Max link speed: 2
Link status: f012
Current link speed: 2
Configuring 0004:40:00.0...
Original link control 2: 00000002
Original link target speed: 2
New target link speed: 2
New link control 2: 00000002
Triggering link retraining...
Original link control: f0120042
New link control: f0120062
Link status: 7012
Current link speed: 2
root@orangepi5:~# ./test.sh 0004:41:00.0
Link capabilities: 00726812
Max link speed: 2
Link status: 7012
Current link speed: 2
Configuring 0004:40:00.0...
Original link control 2: 00000002
Original link target speed: 2
New target link speed: 2
New link control 2: 00000002
Triggering link retraining...
Original link control: 70120042
New link control: 70120062
Link status: 7012
Current link speed: 2

That doesn’t look like it did much for me. It’s saying this PCIe interface is already set to PCIe 2.0.

This might not be fixable. It might just be a really poorly performing PCIe interface unfortunately. That’s very unfortunate! I cannot recommend the Rock 5B any higher if you need really fast NVMe as that board is actually hitting PCIe 2.0 speeds (and no one can with this one).

I think the issue is we got the RK3588S and this is probably all it can do. The Radxa Rock 5B has the real RK3588 and it shows. The Radxa Rock Pi 4C+ has the RK3399T which also has a faster PCIe interface than the RK3588S.

I don’t think we’ve really tested the RK3588S PCIe interface speed before (at least I don’t have this CPU on another board). This board is down thousands of points from the Rock Pi 4B, Rock Pi 4C, Radxa Rock 5B, and even the Compute Module 4.

I hate to say it but you are better off with just about any other PCIe interface than what we got on this device. You’d be better off with a Pi CM4 or just about any modern Radxa board it looks like if you want PCIe 2.0 speeds (or potentially higher for the Rock 5B). How much better? You’ll get 26,000-30,000 instead of 21,000 so it’s underperforming by roughly 25% from other boards that have PCIe 2.0.

This board does not qualify as PCIe 2.0 speeds but it looks like it’s not going to be an easy answer like an overlay. This might be all it can do. I consider this a pretty disastrous result and my hope that this will be fixed/changed has dropped 90%. I wish I had another board with the RK3588S in it so we could test if this is just the best the RK3588S can do or if Orange Pi still has something wrong in their kernel/code/configuration.

I’ve never tested a slower one. The Pi CM4 is faster and all the Radxa boards are faster. Boards that came out years ago (and are *definitively actually PCIe 2.0*) beat it. It’s pretty poor PCIe performance to put it mildly.

It looks like the answer was the more cynical one I was debating with someone earlier here in the comments. It might be a PCIe 2.0 interface but it might as well be a PCIe 1.0 interface because that is how it’s performing. The Radxa Rock 4B+ is curb stomping it with 26k+ scores and that model came out in spring of 2021! 6 core CPUs like the RK3399T are curb stomping it. This should not be happening on a board so much more obviously powerful than those old ones. What in the hell did they do to get the PCIe interface so *bad*?

The whole point of the RK3588S existing was to cut the PCIe 3.0 interface from the RK3588. That is almost the entire difference between the two other than a couple of mild I/O port count changes and it makes almost a $30-$40 price difference (best we can tell from the differences in prices between the boards that have the real RK3588 and the ones that don’t). And boy did they cut it well. Too well.

That’s why my hopes are fading for this at least. We have a version of the RK3588 that has fast PCIe. This is the version that doesn’t and it’s the only reason the board is <$100. It turns out though that if NVMe is what you wanted to do then you would have been much better off paying the 30-40% more. You want the RK3588 for that! It does make me frustrated though that after more than 2 years we can't beat the Raspberry Pi CM4 with any of these boards. I was covering the CM4 back in like 2020. The CM4's PCIe 2.0 interface is in a whole different league from the one on this device. So is the one on the Radxa boards and the real RK3588. Even the real RK3588 isn't beating the CM4 so far in the PCIe benchmarks let alone this one! The CM4 continues to absolutely wipe the floor with the supposedly PCIe 2.0 interfaces on these devices and I have been waiting for YEARS for someone to knock them off the top. Maybe this is the missing piece for people about why this is such a disappointing result to me. I was doing better than this years ago on the CM4. I have other Radxa boards that do better than this that are 1-2 years old. It's absolutely indefensible. I want someone to make a board that can outperform the CM4's PCIe 2.0 interface which should be *easy*. The CM4 was originally supposed to cost like $15-$20 and they can't outperform this with $100+ SoCs? 2 years later? I really thought this board was going to be the one that would finally dethrone the CM4. It sure looks like it should on paper. I would have guaranteed from the spec sheets that this device should beat the CM4's I/O scores. It's not even close though. We're like 25% off. It will be the Orange Pi 7 that will beat the CM4's IO scores at this rate. 25% seems 1-2 generations behind to me. Radxa will probably catch up next generation it looks like but Radxa is at least putting out PCIe 2.0 scores even though they're not beating the CM4 still. I suppose that's the story of this article so far. The spec sheets for this device will lead you to very dubious conclusions about performance here. If the spec sheets are to be believed this device should *smoke* the CM4 on I/O performance. Everything is there. The PCIe 2.0 interface. The faster CPU/GPU/SoC. More memory. It *looks* great! According to the spec sheet it's better than the CM4 in every way. In reality it gets curb stomped. They're not in the same league. It's multiple generations away from challenging it and they're even a generation behind their *other* competition! That's why I think it was such a bad choice to cut to the RK3588S. I would have raised the price instead because then we're at least getting in the neighborhood of CM4 PCIe performance. They would have only been one generation behind (which is a position it looks like Radxa will enjoy this generation) instead of 2. Raspberry Pi doesn't have anything to ship so this would have been the time to try to put the real deal CPUs in your boards and not these cost-cutting variants. Saving the extra money probably isn't helping them very much right now because nobody can get their main competitor's boards anyway. They had a shot here to put up some serious firepower and they still went for the cheap cost-cutting variant. Who is smarter, Radxa or Orange Pi? Radxa went for the expensive one this generation and Orange Pi went with the cheap version (but that is kind of their thing). I don't know the answer but I would give the edge to Radxa. I think this was the time to ship the real deal this generation with Raspberry Pi being in the state it is. Orange Pi is still operating like they're trying to compete against a $60 Raspberry Pi 4. That's not a thing that people have really been able to buy at that price for a long time. I really don't think Orange Pi needs to be so aggressive on pricing in this market but they're operating the same way they always have (and they may be right, they've made it this far). Time will tell! If the Orange Pi 5 wasn't meant to be a value-based board I would absolutely destroy it. If it is meant to be a high performance PCIe 2.0 board it's among the worst (actually it is the worst for PCIe performance). If it's meant to be a value board though it's honestly the best value board I see out there right now. It's in the unique position of being among the worst I/O performers but the best value / bang for the buck! The Radxa Rock 5B might have a better PCIe interface but it starts at like $140 which is roughly 50% more expensive than the Orange Pi 5 (at least what I paid on Amazon). If you don't need NVMe it's a no brainer to pick the Orange Pi 5 over the Rock 5B since you will get the exact same CPU performance with the Orange Pi 5 but with a slow PCIe interface. Thank you Jesús Vega for continuing to investigate this. Just to be clear I do not know why it is performing so poorly. Linux says it is running in PCIe 2.0 mode. I just know that it is. I know that it's not performing as well as Radxa boards or as well as the CM4. There's no question about that. What I don't know is if there's any way to fix/improve it so thank you for continuing your investigation!