A comment (thanks, Erik!) on my Raspberry Pi microSD Card Review asked about the performance of the cards in different models of Raspberry Pi, and it’s been at the back of my mind for a while. Since setting up all of my SBCs with 32GB versions of this card, I decided I could go ahead and test it across the entire Raspberry Pi family.
As I noted in the previously mentioned review, the 32GB card was the slowest by a fair margin, but as this is all I wanted to put in everything in the “Ultimate PoE SBC Rack” then this is what you get. Big sorry. I’m also excluding the CM4/CM5 from this as I don’t have Lite models to test, and I’m not going over the Pi 500 again, though in my Pi 500 review, I test both the 32GB and 64GB cards!
Table of Contents
Testing Methodology
To rule out any obvious inconsistencies, I tested with the exact same microSD card across all models, and then double-checked with another from a different order made via a different distributor some 6 months later. The only variation here is that on the Raspberry Pi 1/Model B tested, I used the microSD to SD adapter that came with an Amazon Basics microSD card.
fio was the weapon of choice, as usual, and I tested across 4KB, 64KB, and 1MB block sizes, with sequential read, sequential write, random read, and random write across each.
Whilst the Pi 5 does support command queueing, and it would have sped things up there considerably, it has been enabled/disabled by default in Raspberry Pi OS a couple of times, and I’ve not yet revisited its current status since my original review. For ease, all of the testing below on the Raspberry Pi 5 was done with command queuing (CQ) disabled.
Finally, whilst unlikely to make a massive difference, the performance CPU governor was enabled across all tests, and we were cooling the board/microSD cards
Benchmark Results by Model
Raspberry Pi 1 Model B+
| Test Type | 4K Throughput (MB/s) | 64K Throughput (MB/s) | 1M Throughput (MB/s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sequential Read | 5.4 | 22.1 | 23.1 |
| Sequential Write | 2.6 | 16.8 | 16.9 |
| Random Read | 5.2 | 19.2 | 22.1 |
| Random Write | 3.0 | 13.8 | 17.8 |
Raspberry Pi 2 Model B
| Test Type | 4K Throughput (MB/s) | 64K Throughput (MB/s) | 1M Throughput (MB/s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sequential Read | 20.2 | 22.7 | 22.9 |
| Sequential Write | 12.2 | 19.0 | 20.2 |
| Random Read | 11.9 | 21.6 | 22.8 |
| Random Write | 4.8 | 17.3 | 20.7 |
Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+
| Test Type | 4K Throughput (MB/s) | 64K Throughput (MB/s) | 1M Throughput (MB/s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sequential Read | 21.0 | 22.9 | 23.0 |
| Sequential Write | 12.9 | 20.0 | 20.1 |
| Random Read | 12.3 | 21.8 | 22.9 |
| Random Write | 5.1 | 17.3 | 20.5 |
Raspberry Pi Zero W
| Test Type | 4K Throughput (MB/s) | 64K Throughput (MB/s) | 1M Throughput (MB/s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sequential Read | 19.0 | 22.6 | 22.7 |
| Sequential Write | 10.8 | 18.7 | 19.2 |
| Random Read | 9.2 | 20.8 | 22.6 |
| Random Write | 4.3 | 16.4 | 20.3 |
Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W
| Test Type | 4K Throughput (MB/s) | 64K Throughput (MB/s) | 1M Throughput (MB/s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sequential Read | 20.8 | 22.9 | 23.0 |
| Sequential Write | 12.1 | 18.8 | 20.0 |
| Random Read | 12.2 | 21.8 | 22.9 |
| Random Write | 4.9 | 17.2 | 20.4 |
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
| Test Type | 4K Throughput (MB/s) | 64K Throughput (MB/s) | 1M Throughput (MB/s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sequential Read | 18.9 | 25.6 | 44.9 |
| Sequential Write | 4.5 | 19.5 | 30.3 |
| Random Read | 15.9 | 39.1 | 45.8 |
| Random Write | 5.3 | 26.6 | 31.0 |
Raspberry Pi 5
Pi 5
| Test Type | 4K Throughput (MB/s) | 64K Throughput (MB/s) | 1M Throughput (MB/s) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sequential Read | 24.4 | 88.9 | 89.8 |
| Sequential Write | 4.5 | 50.4 | 52.4 |
| Random Read | 15.8 | 68.5 | 89.9 |
| Random Write | 3.7 | 34.2 | 51.4 |
Comparative Analysis
If tables aren’t your thing, then here’s a rundown of graphs so you can see the values side-by-side!
Sequential Read
Sequential Write
Random Read
Random Writes
The 4K test results here show some slight “issues” with the 4K speed on the Raspberry Pi 4 and 5, at least with the fio test variables that we’re using here.
At 4K and no buffering, with an iodepth of 64, we see that the Pi 4 and 5’s newer microSD controllers struggle to keep up. You can see from the other block sizes that this isn’t a problem once you start moving up, and this is to be expected. The 4K results here are an extreme, and in a real-world operating system setting, you’ll likely see much better performance.
Conclusion
As this side quest comes to an end, we can quickly confirm that *shock horror*, the newer Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 are both ahead of the rest of the pack, with the Raspberry Pi 5 storming ahead again of the 4, showing great progress in terms of the controllers used on these devices.
If you’re looking for ultimate performance, however, the PCIe connection enables NVMe on the Raspberry Pi 5 and lets you hit speeds of up to around 800MB/s which is far beyond anything you’ll achieve on microSD, unless we get a bit funk and see if Raspberry Pi decide to go take a page from the Nintendo Switch 2’s playbook and go for microSD Express over PCIe? Maybe? Probably not?
Related posts: Best microSD Card for the Raspberry Pi 5 – Best microSD Card for the ROCK 5B
