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posted by takyon on Monday June 24 2019, @03:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the pie-4-u dept.

The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B has been launched, despite months of tricky misdirection implying that it wouldn't be on the market until 2020. The technical specifications include two micro HDMI ports, two USB3 ports, two USB2 ports, dual band Wi-fi, Bluetooth 5, Gigabit Ethernet, and either 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB of RAM. Power consumption is noticeably higher than similar earlier models and the power can be supplied over USBC.

From the spec sheet:

  • Broadcom BCM2711, Quad core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5GHz
  • 1GB ($35), 2GB ($45), or 4GB LPDDR4-2400 SDRAM ($55)
  • 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz IEEE 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 5.0, BLE
  • Gigabit Ethernet
  • 2 USB 3.0 ports; 2 USB 2.0 ports.
  • Raspberry Pi standard 40 pin GPIO header (fully backwards compatible with previous boards)
  • 2 × micro-HDMI ports (up to 4kp60 supported)
  • 2-lane MIPI DSI display port
  • 2-lane MIPI CSI camera port
  • 4-pole stereo audio and composite video port
  • H.265 (4kp60 decode), H264 (1080p60 decode, 1080p30 encode)
  • OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics
  • Micro-SD card slot for loading operating system and data storage
  • 5V DC via USB-C connector (minimum 3A*)
  • 5V DC via GPIO header (minimum 3A*)
  • Power over Ethernet (PoE) enabled (requires separate PoE HAT)
  • Operating temperature: 0 – 50 degrees C ambient

takyon: Review at Tom's Hardware. Cons: "Key software doesn't work at launch, Poor high-res video playback". Cases for the previous Pi don't work due to the new micro-HDMI ports. Tom's measured nearly ten times better storage performance using one of the new USB 3.0 ports, and the gigabit Ethernet port can actually reach nearly 1 Gbps (943 Mbps vs. 237 Mbps for the previous model).

Also at The Verge and Ars Technica.


Original Submission #1Original Submission #2Original Submission #3

 
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  • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday June 24 2019, @05:55PM (2 children)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Monday June 24 2019, @05:55PM (#859426) Journal

    NONE of the old cases will be compatible.

    Thanks for this depressing thought.

    Come on. Pi cases have historically been ultra-inexpensive. And because they're small and not particularly demanding in terms of investment to manufacture, there have been lots of sources, and some of them have been very creative.

    inclusion of dual monitor drivers goes a long way to acknowledge one of the common use cases for a Raspberry Pi: as a photo/video display driver for kiosks and similar.

    There are a lot of truly awesome and handy-riffic use cases for dual monitors. Most people just don't become aware of them until they see two (or more) monitors in action. I run with four monitors here most days, and use the heck out of all of them. When I really get into it, I go with six.

    This version of the pi with 4GB RAM and dual monitor output is a great deal more interesting to me than previous versions. This unit would make a terrific SDR controller platform, a decent stand-alone image editing station, and be great for editing documents that refer to other documents. Or just work on one while having your work interactive media, such as IRC, Slack, Ryver or RocketChat, open on the other.

    1.5 GHZ / 4 cores and 4 GB of RAM is an environment within which all of those applications could be suitably performant as long as they are well-written (I know, most aren't, but still... some of us still work to write performant software without assuming users buying the very latest CPUs will cover up shitty coding habits.)

    With tablets and laptops becoming more common and desktops less so, I suspect that many users simply go about their business without really considering how much more productive and/or fun their lives would be if they had a reasonable amount of working display area, a decent mouse, and a decent keyboard. And a good chair. Mustn't forget that. 😊

    Not that it isn't useful to have a laptop, of course it is, but as a primary working station? That's just shooting yourself in the foot.

    Oh well... you can lead a quadruped to water, but you can't stop them from defecating in it.

    --
    The eyes are the windows to the soul.
    Sunglasses are the window-shades.

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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday June 24 2019, @06:27PM (1 child)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday June 24 2019, @06:27PM (#859444)

    Pi cases have historically been ultra-inexpensive.

    It's not the money, it's the $17 touch-screen display case that I bought a few months ago - I'm betting the touchscreen will work with some effort, but the case it goes into will need updating...

    I run with four monitors here most days, and use the heck out of all of them. When I really get into it, I go with six.

    That's one approach - I just went with the 30" 4K monitor when they came down out of the stratosphere, and I've been pretty happy with that as my primary screen since then - though I do have a side PC in a different OS on its own 1080p monitor, and two cast-off monitors running as photo frames on a couple of Ras-Pis...

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    • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday June 25 2019, @02:57PM

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Tuesday June 25 2019, @02:57PM (#859730) Journal

      I just went with the 30" 4K monitor when they came down out of the stratosphere

      How do you find the pixel pitch? Does it seem small, or large? Generally under OS X / MacOS this is most obvious when viewing an image at 1:1 (something I do a lot) so I'm quite curious. Also, how's your visual acuity? My eyes are slowly giving up on me, and really high resolutions will probably require really large monitors.

      I was considering the new Mac Pro with a large 8k monitor/tv to replace this older Mac Pro, but don't know enough about the details of true 8k display support, etc. I'll have to redesign my desk-space too... not looking forward to that.

      I also like the redundancy of having multiple displays... when one croaks, there are others. If a big single display goes, I'm going to be left hanging, and there are no vendors here at all, so it's either a 600 mile road trip or wait for a slowboat delivery service and hope they haven't wrecked the panel in transit.

      I do all 2D work, so it's only 2D performance that concerns me.

      --
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      And an eel bites your knee🎶
      🎶That's a moray