Raspberry Pi 4 Will It Ever Happen?

RetroFreak89

@darksavior yeah thats true
I believe there was recently a board forgot which one which had better specs than the pi but played games worse probably because of how the pi has been tweaked and worked on for so long that its performance is just better

akafox

I did some investigating. See I want to make a "mini console" so I am looking for performance and cost..and the Orangepi has gotten better traction now. Even has it's own "retropie" image and official "Armbain" distro.

Now there are many boards over there..and I'll list the three that i think can compete with the rasp pi. But they do have a $50 board with 2 gb ram. Not wanting to spend that much :P
https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Orange-Pi-Plus-2-H3-Quad-Core-1-6GHZ-2GB-RAM-4K-Open-source-development-board/1553371_32516755321.html

They do however have a $10 USD board that would be perfect I think..and even a couple of boards that can "keep up" with the pi 3..so yeah the raspberry pi (these are "PIs" as well.) does have compotention now. Now the question is Orange PI with Retrorange pi or wait for the pi 4? These boards may be better now...but if and when the pi 4 comes out will it be that much better...or not?

The orange pi boards have 256 or 512 mb ram...half of the pi 3..
but the ram is DDR3 ram..the ram on the raspberry is only "DDR 1"..as far as I can tell..

The CPU on the orange pi is a A7 CPU (the step up) and the rasp pi has a A5. So logically better/faster means better and faster right? maybe..but with cell phone sbc you never know. CPUs are not created equally. lol

From what I can tell the orange pi zero will out perform the raspberry pi zero for the same price.
https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/New-Orange-Pi-Zero-H2-Quad-Core-Open-source-512MB-development-board-beyond-Raspberry-Pi/1553371_32761500374.html

This I think is a "raspberry pi 3 clone"..and cheaper..
(less ram better cpu)
https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Orange-Pi-PC-Plus-ubuntu-linux-and-android-mini-PC-Beyond-Raspberry-Pi-2/1553371_32668618847.html

(more ram.. same cpu as the rasp pi)
https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/Orange-Pi-Prime-Development-Board-H5-Quad-core-Support-linux-and-android-Beyond-Raspberry-Pi-2/1553371_32803048527.html

However I did watch a video on youtube showing off the orange pi one..looks promising..and it was a couple of years ago.

Yeah I looked into the banana pi as well..really no software support there..and humming boards and beaglebones are to expensive for a "retro machine"

But the thermal barrier will be hit sooner or later and that effects every computer manufacturer..price and quality are always negotiable. ;)

(no I don't sell and nor am I pushing anything. I've not tried any of these boards. Just sharing what I found.)

here is the hardware site : http://www.orangepi.org/
here are the software sites:
desktop https://www.armbian.com/
"retropie" software http://www.retrorangepi.org/

so we have a choice..but is it worth it to wait or not?...that's the question..

herb_fargus

@akafox performance and cost are irrelevant if there is no software support.

akafox

I agree totally which is why I didn't buy an orange pi to begin with..but now there is software..now I have to wait and see how it is supported. The raspberry pi community is much larger.

Yeah my commodore 64 was great..because it had software..and I couldn't run the software without the hardware..it goes hand and hand.

hooperre

@retrofreak89 said in Raspberry Pi 4 Will It Ever Happen?:

@xeon The gpu def needs an upgrade lol

Would another more powerful version of the RPi be possible while not continuing the RPi # lineage? Something like the Raspberry Pi X? Maybe upping the cost to $50 but increasing the specs?

herb_fargus

@hooperre for the time being I imagine they are forced into broadcom's hardware which for the current pi is limited to the videocore IV which is essentially capped at 1GB of RAM. I'm sure at some point they'll develop a new video core but the pi has always been geared at budget/education rather than heavier gaming etc. So I wouldn't hold my breath on something like that but who knows I could be wrong.

RetroFreak89

@herb_fargus true but the pi developers might of noticed that the pi can be used for all kinds of projects and people want better faster pi's when time goes on so who knows maybe well get a pi dedicated for gaming one day itll be like a rpi x or something or rpi pro haha
Only wishful thinking...

davej

@retrofreak89 said in Raspberry Pi 4 Will It Ever Happen?:

@herb_fargus true but the pi developers might of noticed that the pi can be used for all kinds of projects and people want better faster pi's when time goes on so who knows maybe well get a pi dedicated for gaming one day itll be like a rpi x or something or rpi pro haha
Only wishful thinking...

There will never be a Pi dedicated to gaming as that isn't part of the supporting education goals of the Raspberry Pi Foundation and everything else Pis can be used for is secondary to that. Even Pis as a more viable desktop replacement is only useful to the RPF in so far as it makes their education goals more achievable.

Having said that, you may want to read this thread about VC5 on the official Raspberry Pi forums.

The bad news from the RPF's point of view is that the bits of VC5 that exist are the 3D and video decoding bits. VC4 includes many other things, like the camera interface, that RPF still need to provide solutions for - so they can't just use one of the existing set top box chips containing VC5.

The good news from a gaming/media centre point of view is that they only need the 3D and video decoding bits. It's also worth noting that the guy producing an OpenGL driver for VC4 is already adding support for VC5.

Xeon

I think a improved gpu is much more handy than you guys think.. not just for gaming but rendering power.
think about 3d ui, vr, ar.. much more to this than games.

Video encoding on core? leaving the cpu to really do some hard math.

maxbeanz

As has been said many times before, the Raspberry Pi was built as a low cost device for education, not for gaming. If they make it more powerful then it's going to use more power which defeats the point. I'm not sure what they are trying to sell with that Dreamcade thing. It's just a PC box which has been available for years. You could buy one now. All they are giving is a 3D printed case and a frontend. The emulators will probably be RetroArch as usual and most of all the price is a lot lot higher than a Pi.

davej

@xeon said in Raspberry Pi 4 Will It Ever Happen?:

I think a improved gpu is much more handy than you guys think..

I think we have a much better idea of what GPUs can be used for than you think we do.

You need to remember what the Pi is for - education. THE most important part of the Pi specification is that it cost $35. Anything that gets added to future Pis will have to live within that constraint.

Separate GPU memory is not going to happen - it costs too much for too little benefit. All mobile GPUs apart from NVIDIA's use unified memory and, unlike on desktop GPUs, their tile based architectures mean it's not as big an issue as you seem to think.

twd

@darksavior least someone said it too many dumb kids are buying thease type of things called out ETA Prime on it punting that crap

RetroFreak89

@maxbeanz well yeah the Raspberry pi series is for education but i mean the developers seen i bet that most of the rpi is used for emulation and game projects so maybe they can create a more expansive pi series just for gaming projects so we Will have the education Raspberry pi's for 35 dollars and then we also have something like the Raspberry Pi Pro series bit pricier but aimed at heavier 3d applications or gaming :P that be Nice kinda like how we have the pi zero and the regular pi maybe well get another pi series that has a good gpu idk im just hoping but i bet it would sell if they made another series with better gpu even if it is more expansive..

Xeon

@davej i am not even going to reply.
They added 4 Cores... there will be another pi 0 and it will have 2 cores and cheap as the zero..
Same goes for the rest.

if it was only to be educational and cheap it would still just be 1 core because it would still be cheaper than 2.

Prove me wrong.

It's thanks to people saying 'we don't need more' that we don't get more.
Please be the guy to ensure pc's use 486's till we die.

Demand VS Supply.. it's 2017..

You will be amazed what 64MB of dedicated ram for the gpu will do.

Then on top of this... why does the retropie project 'started on the rpi' even exist?
Because we don't want to try play games?

Only fooling yourself and the people that up vote you.

herb_fargus

@xeon what you want and what the pi foundation want may not agree.

Xeon

@herb_fargus
That's up to them.
But if we enforce what they want hard enough.. they would be selling us utter junk and we would act happy.

davej

@xeon said in Raspberry Pi 4 Will It Ever Happen?:

@davej i am not even going to reply.
They added 4 Cores... there will be another pi 0 and it will have 2 cores and cheap as the zero..
Same goes for the rest.

if it was only to be educational and cheap it would still just be 1 core because it would still be cheaper than 2.

Multi-core programming is a widely applicable skill so there's a lot of educational value in providing multiple cores. Developing for immediate mode GPUs vs tiled ones - very little educational value (certainly compared to the task of learning 3D programming in the first place).

Prove me wrong.

It's thanks to people saying 'we don't need more' that we don't get more.
Please be the guy to ensure pc's use 486's till we die.

Nobody is saying that it shouldn't be improved - just that your views of how it should be developed don't fit with the goals of the RPF.

Besides which they do improve things as existing components get cheaper as long as the $35 constraint allows. That's why Pis went from single core ARM6 to 4 core ARM7 and now 4 core ARM8. They also added Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and produced a really cheap limited version (the zero).

Demand VS Supply.. it's 2017..

You will be amazed what 64MB of dedicated ram for the gpu will do.

Have you done much GPU programming? Do you understand why mobile GPUs need far less memory bandwidth than desktop GPUs do? Do you have any idea of the additional costs of adding dedicated memory chips, with the extra connections for separate data and address buses, that you'd require (that $35 constraint again). In any case 64MB is pitifully small for a modern GPU - we're talking GeForce 2 era here.

Question for you: Supposing cost savings meant the RPF could either add separate memory for the GPU or an ADC chip. Which do you think would provide more educational value?

Then on top of this... why does the retropie project 'started on the rpi' even exist?
Because we don't want to try play games?

Only fooling yourself and the people that up vote you.

It's rather a case of understanding the goals of the RPF and having an understanding of the implications of what it is you are proposing.

Xeon

@davej
Yes I Do understand the implications.
Yes there may be a price increase.
Yes I have programmed shaders and bare bone ASM and my own graphics engines.

I don't have any comments to make further as you have not disproved the need for more gpu power and merely flopped pricing and education as the main arguments.

There are tons of boards online with bigger gpu's.. they did not fail due to this.. they failed due to the software base.
they could easily now add a board for those that want more brunt without any problem as this will not end what they have built.

Give me a real reason why not.

davej

@xeon said in Raspberry Pi 4 Will It Ever Happen?:

@davej
Yes I Do understand the implications.
Yes there may be a price increase.
Yes I have programmed shaders and bare bone ASM and my own graphics engines.

I don't have any comments to make further as you have not disproved the need for more gpu power and merely flopped pricing and education as the main arguments.

Pricing and education ARE the main arguments - we are talking about an organisation set up with the goal of encouraging education in computing by providing cheap hardware. Extra GPU power for people to play games is not a requirement as far as the RPF are concerned.

There are tons of boards online with bigger gpu's..

None of them have separate GPU memory - which is why I'm puzzled as why you think it's so important.

they did not fail due to this.. they failed due to the software base.
they could easily now add a board for those that want more brunt without any problem as this will not end what they have built.

If you think adding a board with a new GPU, whilst keeping compatibility with existing stuff, is easy you really don't understand the implications of what you are asking for.

Give me a real reason why not.

It would cost money that they could better spend fulfilling their educational goals.

You might not like it but that is the real reason.

The Pi4 is highly likely to have a VC5 GPU but you'll probably start complaining it's not as fast something else.

Xeon

i was using the separate memory as a example.

Adding a enhanced gpu does not have to mean a full rewrite.. didn't adding support for multi cpu devices mean we now have 2 different retro pie images?

I also never said it was easy.
It's also not impossible, a bit more gpu power wont end the universe really.
it won't destroy what has been built.
And it would not just be for gaming as some gpu's can do some amazing stuff on core that is not gaming related what so ever.
Just depends on how strong the gpu is