Performance benchmarks with Odroid HC2 and Armbian+OMV5

I ran armbian-config's benchmark on my Odroid HC2 with Armbian and OMV5. I had applied the Optimized Board Configuration with armbian-config for the HC1/HC2. For those curious with the same or similar hardware, this may be useful as a reference point.

It is interesting to note that the passively cooled CPU seems to throttle to 1600-1700 MHz, while it is nominally 2000 MHz. I am also using the optional plastic case.

http://ix.io/2h7g

It turns out the Optimized Board Configuration for the HC1/HC2 is not prepared for kernel 5.4.y yet. So for now it is best to stick with the XU4 configuration for the full 2000 MHz and correspondingly improved performance:
http://ix.io/2k57

Note that there is a serious performance regression with HC2/HC1/XU4 with kernel 5.* where the memory bandwidth and latency are multiple times worse than on kernel 4.*

See https://forum.odroid.com/viewtopic.php?f=184&t=38774

You can use the benchmarking tool sbc-bench (also available through sudo armbian-config -> Software -> Benchmarking) and post your results. Kernel 4.* results in particular would be interesting.

Fortunately a workaround has been found. Currently on kernel 5.4.50-odroidxu4 the performance has been restored. http://ix.io/2qJf

No, to my knowledge the board optimizing configurations have not been implemented in the latest armbian, so applying them is pointless.

This issue was with a big performance regression in memory copy speed, which has thankfully been fixed. Just make sure you're on a recent kernel, and it's all good now.

Yes, I saw and tried applying it too through armbian-config. You can ask on IRC #armbian, but last time I checked, they said they didn't have time yet to work on kernel 5.4.y configs for the HC2. In fact they said they're not happy with the state of the performance and know it can be improved, but again it's a question of time/effort. At least it's stable.

If it works, it's not a wrong version. I'm not sure if anything about OMV5 requires armbian buster / 5.4.y. As far as I can tell, OMV and armbian are independent-ish, with OMV being packages and configurations applied on top of an OS like armbian or others. Kernel 5.4.y is the latest with armbian and makes sense to use it in the longer term. armbian-config lets you choose different kernels, but I have no idea how well that would work in your case.

IIRC OMV update is the same as system update with apt. I'm guessing legacy refers to kernel 4.