Asus has just released its new Tinker Board which rivals the Raspberry Pi with better specs out of the box. The new DIY board computer does cost more than its competitor.
Raspberry Pi made its name in the programming and computer engineering market because of its cheap but highly-capable boards. Asus is now joining Arduino in competing with Raspberry Pi for the top choice in board computers.
The Asus Tinker Board for features a quad-core ARM Cortex A17 CPU clocked at 1.8GHz coupled with 2GB DDR3 memory, Raspberry's Pi 3 Model B variant still has advantage because of its 64-bit A53 quad-core processor compared to the Tinker's 32-bit CPU.
What the Tinker lacks in its CPU makes up for it with its GPU. The Mali-T764 GPU is better than the Pi 3's Broadcom VideoCore IV as the former supports 4K videos even with H.264 decoding. Only 1080p videos and lower are supported by the Pi 3 which can be disappointing for users who want to build a media computer for their 4K TVs or monitors.
Asus also claims that the Tinker Board has higher scores in Geekbench, Ars Technica has learned. It may also mean that it will have better performance when it comes to 3D applications although it is still not recommended for hardcore gaming.
Other Asus Tinker Board specs include gigabit Ethernet ports, SDIO 3.0 support and 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi module, PC World reported. It also has one HDMI out and a microSD port where users can insert their cards installed with their OS of choice.
The Asus Tinker Board is now available for pre-ordering with a price of around $57. Shipping of the product is expected to be done in February.
Watch a hands-on video below: