When the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC was released last year, it came in 4 and 8 GB RAM variants, which currently retail from around $80 USD and €90 for the 8 GB variant to $60 and €65 for the 4 GB variant. Now Raspberry Pi has announced the launch of a third Raspberry Pi 5 variant: a 2 GB version which also features a new stepping of the BCM2712 SoC. This would sell for about $50 USD and feature the D0 stepping that purportedly strips out a lot of the ‘dark silicon’ that is not used on the SBC.
These unused die features are likely due to the Broadcom SoCs used on Raspberry Pi SBCs being effectively recycled set-top box SoCs and similar. This means that some features that make sense in a set-top box or such do not make sense for a general-purpose SBC, but still take up die space and increase the manufacturing defect rate. The D0 stepping thus would seem to be based around an optimized die, with as only possible negative being a higher power density due to a (probably) smaller die, making active cooling even more important.
As for whether 2 GB is enough for your purposes depends on your use case, but knocking $10 off the price of an RPi 5 could be worth it for some. Perhaps more interesting is that this same D0 stepping of the SoC is likely to make it to the other RAM variants as well. We’re awaiting benchmarks to see what the practical difference is between the current C1 and new D0 steppings.
Thanks to [Mark Stevens] for the tip.
Today I received an email from Seeed Studio announcing a 2Gb version of the Pi 5.
Im assuming 2gb Pi5 is better suited to running headless. Chrome struggles pretty hard on Raspbian even with my Pi4 8gb
Raspbian/RPi OS aren’t the only OSes. I moved away from the Raspberry Pi boards because there are much better options out there, but if I had to use them again I’d rather use Alpine OS which has ready made images right on their site, and is way more compact and fast compared to the dedicated OSes.
https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/
Well it is pretty rare to see Chrome using less than 2gb of RAM. That’s almost quaint
Chrome(ium) is a RAM hog, which every Electron framework programs also inherit.
Better use Epiphany or Icecat than Chromium.
Really curious to know what bits weren’t used and have been taken out…
If only Broadcom weren’t so determined to stop anyone knowing what’s inside their chips and how to use them.
Broadcom has been a supplier for the US military for quite some time; security through obscurity is implied.
That’s not it.
I’ve had to integrate quite a few Broadcom PHYs, MACs, and switches over the years. Every single time I start working with a new part it’s an uphill battle to get documentation, software, and support. And this was with a very well known company that would do 100ku/yr of some of these parts over 5 years. For one project it took 6 months and many calls between our legal team and theirs to get an NDA needed so I could download their switch BSP, without which we couldn’t use the board we had already prototyped.
The unfortunate part is that most of their products are good and priced competitively. They’re just extremely unpleasant to work with.
i’m eager to see if raspi foundation will ever declare independence from broadcom for the signature pi boards. it really is astonishing to see them highlight the power of philosophy, the difference between ‘a group working for hobbyists trying to productize cheap post-tv chips’ versus ‘a group working for broadcom trying to shove garbage post-tv chips down our throats.’
it doesn’t have to be this way
Why would they diversify away from Broadcom? There is no practical benefit. 99.9999% of users don’t care about the underlying silicon being closed. They’d have to re engineer everything and wouldn’t have the preferential treatment they get from broadcom – Until september 2020 Eben was a very senior Broadcom application engineer, as were many other senior players at rpi. That relationship has significant benefits.
Heard from a friend: One unused PCI-E controller, H.264 decoder, and the native CSI/DSI ports–whos functions are handled by the RP1.
Meant that as a reply to CJay.
Expose the PCI-E Controller, Enable the H.264 decoder. The CSI/DSI ports are fair game.
Bad Broadcom to worse. Rockchip, peeps.
Yes!…
https://green.bug-eyed.monster/armbian-on-the-h96-max-v56-android-tv-box/
Sure would be nice to make a more expensive version with an onboard 9v-12v buck converter and a USB chip which asks for that voltage. The 5V 5A USB power requirement is annoying. I had to resort to scaping the soldermask off the a bit of the M.2 PCIe adapter board to solder some wires on, allowing the use of a 5V 6A 120V supply I had on hand. I thought I could easily solder to the header riser pins – nope.
$50?? These things were a hard sell at $35, not including rip-ship. What’s the value? These hipster arguments about ecosystems and documentation and connections with fruity things from fruity vendors doesn’t really hold up when prices are insane. Something’s gone terribly wrong with the company.
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806499984093.html
You post a item equal to the pi zero 2 w for 20€ while the pi zero 2w could be purchased in mouse for 15€
Accounting for inflation, this new Pi 5 is approximately the same price as the original Pi was. Their prices aren’t insane, we just went through a large inflationary period with no following deflation (because “deflation=recession” bullshine).
I don’t think hipsters have been a thing for like 20 years. But yes, turns out that when you turn off the global economy for a couple years things get more expensive
That really is a bizarre take – the value to a Pi product beyond the usable documentation, great support and community is that they produce a product for just about every price point imaginable! And they are all pretty great value for what they are – yes there are cheaper, more powerful and sometimes both from other vendors but the differences are never huge, and with the Pi you know even in 10 years time you will just be able to update to the newest kernel and have a useful and secure brain for your project…
You don’t have to buy Pi5 unless you actually need the performance it offers…
Or you can get an Orange Pi 3b with more peripherals, a full 2280 M.2 slot, a fast Rockchip CPU, a full sized HDMI port, a spot for EMMC, and a full 8GB of RAM for $55 shipped.
Runs Raspbian or DietPi just fine.
Rpi has been irrelevant since the rpi4 launched.
Raspberry Pis haven’t been priced for hobbiests, makers, or hackers since the rpi3.
Having “better support” at that price is meangless.
That’s like saying Dell has great support and pointing at a 4h parts replacement guarantee on a corporate service contract.
The RP2040 is a pretty great microcontroller though.
@Ian – This ^
Or a new N100 8gb + 256gb SSD for less than 90 euros.
“that purportedly strips out”?
“purportedly” has an implication that Raspberry Pi’s statement about stripping out unused sections on the D0 stepping processor might not be true? Does the author of this piece think that Raspberry Pi are not telling the truth?
You may want to check the dictionary definition of ‘purport’. Although it is claimed that certain elements are removed from the C1 stepping, as this is covered under NDA, we are not privy to this information, ergo we have no way to ascertain the truthfulness of this statement. Beyond signing an applicable NDA, that is.
To this native British English speaker, Purportedly implies lack of belief, it’s similar to alleged, if not a bit stronger. From the dictionary : “You may not always believe that claim.” or “In a way that is stated to be true, although this may not be the case”
It’s stronger than meaning ‘we haven’t been able to verify’ – it means you believe that it may not be true.
If you mean it’s not confirmed or verified – but you have no real reason to disbelieve Raspberry Pi – it would be more neutral to say ‘Raspbery Pi states … but we’ve not been able to verify this independently without signing an NDA’
Use of purportedly implies you think Raspberry Pi may not be telling the truth. If you instead mean that you’ve not been able to independently verify a fact – then purportedly is a more loaded word than I think you meant to use.
Wasn’t the Pi supposed to be a 25 USB computer, cheap enough for children to play with and break without the parents becoming upset. Looks like they have lost their way.
USD
It was $35, and this one is the same price, adjusted for inflation.
i am pretty strongly opposed to raspi but i don’t think this is a fair complaint. they hit the whole range. from the $4 raspberry pico to the $90 rpi5. if you want a $15 linux computer, the raspberry pi zero is there for you. you only have to shell out more money if you want more features.
of course the other thing is, even by the time of the rpi4b, the all-up cost for a rpi system was comparable to a used NUC. the value proposition is kind of sketchy. but they didn’t stop making low-end boards when they introduced the rpi5.
They do not at all hit the whole range.
They have a cheap and useful microcontroller, a slow wifi only stripped down offering, and a vastly overpriced “corpo maker” SBC.
No, you don’t get to count the 10 year old rpi3. And the rpi4 is still being scalped.
Raspberry Pi has not been a relevant option since 2018.
“Great support” is meaningless if the supposed customers can’t buy them.
Rpi USED to make the best boards they could, with off the shelf parts, for an education based price. That clearly changed when the rpi4 used all that corporate funding to build a much “better” Pi, with a 75% price bump.
i was certainly amused how long the rpi4 was unobtainium. if i had a penny for everyone telling me that raspberry pi’s downsides are worth it because they’re so readily available! lol
but fwiw that day is finally over. they’ve had it in stock at reputable vendors pretty steadily for at least a few months now
Why can’t we count all the models that are for sale, even if some of them are older designs? If they’re truly not good enough, then of course it costs more price to get more performance and features. But the first Pi and the zero’s have enough ability to do many low-intensity things.
And those are still available. The Pi 1 Model A+ costs about 25 $USD.
I’m not a hard core tinkerer like most of you here, so excuse for not comparing products that aren’t designed for the same market.
But last year I bought a Fujitsu Esprimo mini PC with i3-6100T, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD for £50, and a Minix U9-H Android box for £20, granted both used. So $50-$80 for a bare boned board, albeit new, yikes.
Again, not comparing apples for apples there, but I concur with the other comments that the pricing looks a bit steep for what you’re getting.
Thanks to the guys that pointed out the Orange Pi, now that looks like a lot more palatable value for money.
You can buy a second hand Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB RAM for 10$, assuming you can find/convince somebody to sell it to you for that price ;) These Pi’s have a lot of qualities that the faster Intel computers don’t have, and for a lot of tasks it’s by far the best computer for the job, certainly compared to an Intel or AMD desktop.
Even if I had a project in mind where 2GB was plenty… unless I was building in bulk and so buying many of them.. I just can’t see choosing NOT to double the ram for a mere $10 more. $30 to double it again? Well. ok, back in my college days I would have had to think hard about that. How many days do I want to eat Ramen? But $10 to go from 2 to 4? That’s a no-brainer.
Indeed, I suspect this 2GB model will be very popular in education and industrial settings – as they will be buying many of them, probably find the power consumption more important and I expect this model will be more efficient from the description. But not be the common choice for the hobby user for that reason, its such a small price increase to get so much more potential…
I’ve never regretted buying 8GB Pi4’s as it means they have enough ram I can throw just about anything you could possibly expect a credit card sized computer to do at them, and more besides (at least they keep surprising me with how well they handle fairly tough tasks).
I’ll just sit here waiting for the Rpi500
I have a Pi 5/8GB. I’m not particularly interested in the Pi500 but a CM5 would definitely get my attention.