Revised Raspberry Pi 5 chip comes with unexpected power savings

jimmydoreisalefty , 5 hours ago

Cross-post comment:

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.

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So is it worth stepping down to a 2 GB Pi 5 just to get the simpler D0 chip? No. But is it cool to have a cheaper 2 gig option exist? Yes. Just make sure you have a use case for it that doesn’t need a ton of RAM.^[[1] jeffgeerling.com/…/new-2gb-pi-5-has-33-smaller-di…]

EasternLettuce , 5 hours ago

Fuck rpi and their decision to ipo, I’ll look elsewhere for sbcs

SnotFlickerman , 3 hours ago

It’s a tough call, because while their decision to go IPO sucks, they’re one of the few SBCs with consistent kernel support.

I’ve heard about a lot of headaches people have with other SBCs due to lack of support.

As much as the Pi Foundation sucks noodles, the levels of software support for the Pi is currently unequaled.

Anyway, here’s hoping it gets equaled, and fast.

evidences , 2 hours ago

Yeah the support is what pulls me to them but anymore unless I need the form factor of the pi it’s hard to justify them. Like the only place I see a hobbyist use for the Pi is 3d printers. Outside of that everything else seems like a small form factor desktop is better.

Peffse , 55 minutes ago

Support is what makes me worry about Milk-V and their flood of RISC-V products. You see videos where somebody is trying to get Ubuntu working on Mars while using some colorful language or how the same guy purchased two Meles which were DOA and it makes me wonder how thinly spread their support must be. Or perhaps how packed the Pi Foundation and community support must be.

filister , 2 hours ago

That’s definitely true but pretty much you can buy some x64 mini PC for a very similar price, and also similar power consumption that is going to be more versatile and powerful. For example you can run some VMs etc. on top of it. The only benefit of the Rpi nowadags is only their form factor.