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posted by martyb on Friday May 29 2020, @12:02PM   Printer-friendly
from the more-is-better dept.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced a new Raspberry Pi 4 model with 8 GB of RAM:

Now, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has upped the ante by releasing a Raspberry Pi 4 B with a generous 8GB of RAM. Launching today for $75, the Raspberry Pi 4 B (8GB) is identical to other Raspberry Pi 4 B models in every way, except for its RAM capacity. So what do you do with all that memory, and is spending $20 more than the price of the $55 4GB model worth it?

The short answer is that, right now, the 8GB capacity makes the most sense for users with very specialized needs: running data-intensive server loads or using virtual machines. As our tests show, it's pretty difficult to use more than 4GB of RAM on Raspberry Pi, even if you're a heavy multitasker.

A beta version of a 64-bit Raspbian OS, which is being renamed to "Raspberry Pi OS", is available. The existing 32-bit Raspbian can use all the RAM, but with a limit of up to 3 GB per process.

Some changes have been made to the board:

The back of the board adds silkscreen for certifications, as well as existing modifications for Raspberry Pi 4 Rev 1.2 to avoid damaging the board when inserting a MicroSD card. But the top of the board has more modification around the USB-C port, USB Type-A ports, and a chip between the VLI PCIe to USB chip and AV jack is just gone. So it's possible further USB-C issues have been fixed, and some improvements have been made to USB host ports maybe with regards to powering up external hard drives.

[Update from Eben Upton about hardware changes:

These are the regulator changes I mention in the post. The disappeared chip near the USB connector is the old regulator. The new stuff near the USB-C is the new regulator. The input clamp component has moved across to the USB area to make room.

Several iterations of the Raspberry Pi 4's firmware have reduced power consumption and heat. A beta-level firmware update from earlier in the week added USB boot support.

Also at TechCrunch, The Verge, Notebookcheck, Ars Technica, and ZDNet.

Previously: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Launched
Raspberry Pi 4B CPU Overclocked to 2.147 GHz, GPU at 750 MHz
Raspberry Pi Foundation Begins Working on Vulkan Driver
2 GB Model of Raspberry Pi 4 Gets Permanent Price Cut to $35
Raspberry Pi to Power Ventilators as Demand for Boards Surges
Raspberry Pi Launches Camera With Interchangeable Lens System for $50


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  • (Score: 1) by DECbot on Friday May 29 2020, @03:00PM (3 children)

    by DECbot (832) on Friday May 29 2020, @03:00PM (#1000552) Journal

    As far as I know, there's not an arm port for Far Cry yet.
     
    Joking aside, is the new pi able to run the java version of Minecraft well enough that I could give it to the kids without them complaining about the performance?

    --
    cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday May 29 2020, @03:44PM (2 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday May 29 2020, @03:44PM (#1000570) Journal

    Raspbian comes with a neutered version of Minecraft. Not sure about real versions.

    It looks like it could work [youtube.com]. Probably better if you make sure with someone who plays it, and give the RPi4 the full overclock treatment with active cooling.

    I just remembered that Nintendo Switch only has 4 GB of LPDDR4. lolwat

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    [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @10:08PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 29 2020, @10:08PM (#1000804)
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @12:10AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 31 2020, @12:10AM (#1001225)

        But the more mods and more block types you have the better cached and performant it will be. The VC4 GPU in it was pretty anemic. And I say that having run minetest on a genuine Radeon 9800 128M. That ran at around 15-30 fps if you kept the draw distance reined in, or 5-1fps if you didn't. But that should give you some idea of how well minetest scales on the hardware front. The server itself is pretty low requirements unless you add lots of big mods running behind the scenes logic, or need faster block generation (it only generates new blocks as someone moved within range, which is usually 4 blocks in any direction, makes the first run towards a mountain rather empty until you get close enough to generate it! Some of these defaults may have changed, and the game allowed generating much further out, although the block generation algorithm wasn't always the best (generating ones further away for you first rather than the closest.