I decided to try out the layest 'official' Ambian release, Armbian 23.5 Jammy Gnome, which installed just fine.


Then I followed the instructions on the download page to 'Enable 3D Acceleration (Ubuntu variant only):'.

This consists of a number of operations:


sudo add-apt-repository ppa:liujianfeng1994/panfork-mesa
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:liujianfeng1994/rockchip-multimedia
sudo apt update
sudo apt dist-upgrade
sudo apt install mali-g610-firmware rockchip-multimedia-config


After a reboot, I followed some of the usual tests to check the latest play with regards to hardware acceleration.

Starting with Webgl samples, in particular the popular Aquarium fish, which resulted in the best performance of 1 fish @ 7fps.
Then to YouTube, where a 4K sample (Costa Rica), had more dropped frames than thjose actually playing at 480p.

This some of the worst performance that I have ever seen on any hardware that I have ever owned.

Having used other user generated Armbian builds, I already know what it is capable of when optimised.

But the biggest issue here is that the manufacturer is providing offical links to software that performs so abysmally that it not only harms it's reputation, but in this case, also risks the reputation of the Armbian team, who are nown as being highly skilled and helpful for those who are familiar with them.

But to a new user, they may very easily believe that neither entity is worth following.

The fact that the Orange Pi 5 has 'platinum' support might also re-inforce any prospective negative viewpoint because if platimum is associated with abysmal then it is not a good look.

I think it safe to say that by demonstration, or the lack of it, support from Oranhe Pi is as close to zero as you can get. We get images but that is then it. No way of communicating with the company in any meaningful way.

This is also re-enforced by the fact that despite creating these forums, there is absolutely no official presnce whatsoever.

Why bother if you have no intention of doing anything other than selling hardware products?

The bottom line in this particular instance is that out of the box, so to speak, initial official Armbian performance is so abysmal that is is almost laughable and this benefits nobody at any end of the chain of development, production or use.

Does anybody from the cmpany have the balls or integrity to say anythung to the customer base?

Status Update: The official Orange Pi 5 image isn't updated often, so I tried their official 3rd party image by Joshua Riek.  Wow.  Updated kernel, no crashes, and build-in graphics acceleration from the get-go.

https://github.com/Joshua-Riek/ubuntu-rockchip

Handles my NVMe drives without problems, the UI (using Ubuntu Desktop) is accelerated so it's smooth and usable.  It's not smooth like an i9 with a high end nVidia card, but for this board, it's smooth and totally usable.

So this is my current setup and will be for a while, since everything works exactly as expected. Quite impressed.

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I have the same board and have had the same problems getting 3D to work.  Fractional scaling is awful on this board without acceleration.  It's like an old Windows 95 computer with a cheap VGA graphics card.

I'm hoping that 3D acceleration will improve over time as the drivers are worked on and become more mature.

A bigger problem I'm having is that the computer reboots after the nvme drive gets too hot.  I tried with a Kingston V2, Western Digital SN770, and a Lexar 710.  All of them cause the computer to lock up if copying large amounts of data for more than 30 seconds.  The Lexar stays the coolest at 59 degrees C, but the WD and Kingston get easily over 70 degrees C.

After a while, the screen goes black, network connections die, and all input ceases.  Only a hard reboot gets it working again, and only after the nvme drive has cooled down.

Never had this problem on any of my other boxes.

The specs on this board are great.  But there is still a lot to be desired.

Status Update: So I tried 3 different NVME drives and they ALL fail with Armbian (Jammy).  A simple way to crash the board is running:

sudo stress --hdd 4 --timeout 60

This will run the nvme at full blast.  Crashes within 20 seconds.

I tried the official Orange Pi 5 Plus Jammy image from orangepi.org.  No problems, no crashes.

So my guess is that Armbian doesn't support the Orange Pi 5+ board very well.

This post was finally edited by bluesman at 2023-10-28 15:54

I've been testing his builds from the start and they do offer another decent experience.


What is holding all Pi 5 development right now though is the outdated kernel, which althugh updated since the beginning, is still way behind the general curve.

When that happens then the experience will really fly.