raspberry pi 5

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Maze of adapters, software patches gets a dedicated GPU working on a Raspberry Pi

Actually getting the GPU working required patching the Linux kernel to include the open-source AMDGPU driver, which includes Arm support and provides decent support for the RX 460 (Geerling says the card and its Polaris architecture were chosen because they were new enough to be practically useful and to be supported by the AMDGPU driver, old enough that driver support is pretty mature, and because the card is cheap and uses PCIe 3.0). Nvidia’s GPUs generally aren’t really an option for projects like this because the open source drivers lag far behind the ones available for Radeon GPUs.

Once various kernel patches were applied and the kernel was recompiled, installing AMD’s graphics firmware got both graphics output and 3D acceleration working more or less normally.

Despite their age and relative graphical simplicity, running Doom 3 or Tux Racer on the Pi 5’s GPU is a tall order, even at 1080p. The RX 460 was able to run both at 4K, albeit with some settings reduced; Geerling also said that the card rendered the Pi operating system’s UI smoothly at 4k (the Pi’s integrated GPU does support 4K output, but things get framey quickly in our experience, especially when using multiple monitors).

Though a qualified success, anything this hacky is likely to have at least some software problems; Geerling noted that graphics acceleration in the Chromium browser and GPU-accelerated video encoding and decoding support weren’t working properly.

Most Pi owners aren’t going to want to run out and recreate this setup themselves, but it is interesting to see progress when it comes to using dedicated GPUs with Arm CPUs. So far, Arm chips across all major software ecosystems—including Windows, macOS, and Android—have mostly been restricted to using their own integrated GPUs. But if Arm processors are really going to compete with Intel’s and AMD’s in every PC market segment, we’ll eventually need to see better support for external graphics chips.

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2GB Raspberry Pi 5’s new chip also cuts power use by up to 30%, testing shows

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What we don’t know is whether 4GB or 8GB Pis will get the tweaked chip design.

The Broadcom SoC used in the original 4GB and 8GB Raspberry Pi 5. The 2GB version uses an updated revision with several small but significant benefits.

Enlarge / The Broadcom SoC used in the original 4GB and 8GB Raspberry Pi 5. The 2GB version uses an updated revision with several small but significant benefits.

Raspberry Pi

When Raspberry Pi introduced a new 2GB version of the Raspberry Pi 5 board earlier this month, CEO Eben Upton said that the board would come with a slightly updated version of the board’s Broadcom BCM2712C1 SoC. By removing chip functionality that the Pi 5 didn’t use, the new D0 stepping of the chip would use less silicon, reducing its cost.

Raspberry Pi enthusiast and YouTuber Jeff Geerling has performed some firsthand testing of the 2GB Pi 5. As Upton said, the new board is functionally identical to the older 4GB and 8GB boards, with identical performance (as long as whatever workload you’re running doesn’t benefit from extra RAM, anyway). The new silicon die is also about 33 percent smaller than the old one, which Geerling verified by removing the SoC’s heat spreader to expose the silicon underneath and measuring by hand.

Geerling also demonstrated that the 2GB Pi 5 comes with a couple of unexpected benefits that Upton didn’t mention in his announcement—that the 2GB Pi 5 runs a little cooler and uses a little less power than the 4GB and 8GB editions. The 2GB Pi used just 2.4 W or power at idle and 8.9 W during a CPU stress test, compared to 3.3 W and 9.8 W in the 4GB version. The SoC of the 2GB Pi measured 30° Celsius at idle and 59° under load, compared to 32° and 63° for the 2GB version. Those are all small but significant differences, given that nothing has changed other than the SoC.

As to the exact functionality that was removed from the chip for the 2GB version of the Pi, the company hasn’t gotten specific. But Geerling speculates that it’s mostly related to functionality that’s being handled by the custom RP1 I/O chip—RP1 handles the Ethernet and USB controllers, display interfaces, and GPIO, among other things.

We also don’t know whether the D0 stepping will eventually be used for the 4GB and 8GB versions of the Pi 5 board. Raspberry Pi would likely benefit by standardizing on a single, cheaper chip rather than shipping different steppings on different boards—we’ve asked the company if it has any plans to share on this front, and we will update if we receive a response.

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$50 2GB Raspberry Pi 5 comes with a lower price and a tweaked, cheaper CPU

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Despite changes, 2GB Pi 5 is “functionally identical” to other iterations.

The 8GB Raspberry Pi 5 with the official fan and heatsink installed.

Enlarge / The 8GB Raspberry Pi 5 with the official fan and heatsink installed.

Andrew Cunningham

We’re many months past the worst of the Raspberry Pi shortages, and the board is finally widely available at its suggested retail price at most sites without wait times or quantity limitations. One sign that the Pi Foundation is feeling more confident about the stock situation: the launch of a new 2GB configuration of the Raspberry Pi 5, available starting today for $50. That’s $10 less than the 4GB configuration and $30 less than the 8GB version of the board.

Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton writes that the 2GB version of the board includes a revised version of the Broadcom BCM2712C1 SoC that is slightly cheaper to manufacture. Upton says that the D0 stepping of the BCM2712C1 strips out some “dark silicon” built-in functionality that the Pi wasn’t using but was still taking up space on the silicon die and increasing the cost of the chip.

“From the perspective of a Raspberry Pi user, [the chip] is functionally identical to its predecessor: the same fast quad-core processor; the same multimedia capabilities; and the same PCI Express bus that has proven to be one of the most exciting features of the Raspberry Pi 5 platform,” Upton writes. “However, it is cheaper to make, and so is available to us at somewhat lower cost. And this, combined with the savings from halving the memory capacity, has allowed us to take $10 out of the cost of the finished product.”

At $50, the price tag is still north of the baseline $35 price that the Pi started at for many years. The Pi 4 had a 1GB model for $35 when it launched, and there was a $35 2GB model available for a while in 2020, but widespread shortages and supply chain issues led to a “temporary” price increase in late 2021 that is, as of this writing, still in place. At least the 2GB Pi 5 is only $5 more expensive than the 2GB version of the Pi 4, which is still in stock for $45 at many retailers.

Though you’ll want a fully fledged 8GB Raspberry Pi if you want to try using one as an everyday desktop PC, there are plenty of Pi use cases that will benefit from its additional speed and connectivity options without needing more RAM. Retro emulation boxes aren’t necessarily RAM-hungry but can benefit from the Pi 5’s extra CPU and GPU speed, and many types of lightweight server apps (Wireguard, Homebridge, Pi-hole, to name a few) can benefit from the faster Wi-Fi and Ethernet and improved support for more reliable NVMe storage.

All that said, for just $10 more, we’d still probably point most people to the more flexible and future-proof 4GB version. The Pi boards sitting around my house have all lived multiple lives at this point, picking up new tasks as my needs have changed, and new Pi boards have come out—if your Pi project today won’t benefit from more RAM, it’s possible that tomorrow’s Pi project will.

The 2GB Pi 5 is available for order from outlets like PiShop and CanaKit and should filter out to other Pi retailers soon.

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