The new Raspberry Pi 4 is here!!

[sirhenrythe5th]

I doubt it will be improved too much.
I have a similar experience with GameCube (Dolphin) on my Android-Phone.
The Games run pretty good (Xperia 5 Premium)!

But i guess you cant really compare it to a Pi, better CPU, much better GPU, and of course better supported emulators.

[dankcushions]

@hiulit said in The new Raspberry Pi 4 is here!!:

VideoCore VI graphics, supporting OpenGL ES 3.x

this is HUGE news I think. it should mean fullspeed and accurate emulation for:

• n64
• dreamcast
• saturn

and better emulators for

• playstation (beetle-hw)

all of these required GLES 3.x for full support. GLES 2.x was always holding pi3 back, for the most part.

i should think the new CPU should allow for full speed current MAME also, but we will see...

[shavecat]

Crazy ! olalala
Im waiting for reports ! ;))

[ledow]

@sirhenrythe5th said in The new Raspberry Pi 4 is here!!:

VideoCore VI

It's supposed to have h265 acceleration, but whether that's native or not, I can't see a benchmark for. Handy for, say, media centres. They say both HDMI can be 4K... and I can't see anything about VideoCore VI / Broadcom BCM2711 anywhere except in Pi4 announcements... maybe it's a slight graphics upgrade?

Certainly nothing hugely attractive and ground-breaking. The only thing of interest was the overclocking which should take you beyond what the Pi 3 can manage (according to one article I read), but it doesn't seem humungous.

Hopefully with USB-C the damn connectors won't be changing much again, and we'll be able to buy almost USB-C and it'll have enough oomph to power the Pi 4. I know that USB-C powerbanks are already a thing, so that would be nice.

[hooperre]

@quicksilver says wait for Raspberry Pi 4 to build a handheld. Day later Raspberry Pi 4 drops. You’re a prophet!

[sirhenrythe5th]

@dankcushions said in The new Raspberry Pi 4 is here!!:

@hiulit said in The new Raspberry Pi 4 is here!!:

VideoCore VI graphics, supporting OpenGL ES 3.x

this is HUGE news I think. it should mean fullspeed and accurate emulation for:

• n64
• dreamcast
• saturn

and better emulators for

• playstation (beetle-hw)

all of these required GLES 3.x for full support. GLES 2.x was always holding pi3 back, for the most part.

i should think the new CPU should allow for full speed current MAME also, but we will see...

WOW! that sounds too good to be true! :O
Thanks for info darkcushions.

[ledow]

Not if the graphics updates are just MESA updates (which they appear they could be according to the github commits). Unless it's accelerated GLES 3.x, then it's just the same hardware trying to do more work.

It provides 3.x "capability", i.e. it can take 3.x GL instructions, but that doesn't mean it's automatically faster than just doing the 2.x equivalent unless it has specific hardware acceleration for it.

[Barcrest]

@sirhenrythe5th said in The new Raspberry Pi 4 is here!!:

@dankcushions said in The new Raspberry Pi 4 is here!!:

@hiulit said in The new Raspberry Pi 4 is here!!:

VideoCore VI graphics, supporting OpenGL ES 3.x

this is HUGE news I think. it should mean fullspeed and accurate emulation for:

• n64
• dreamcast
• saturn

and better emulators for

• playstation (beetle-hw)

all of these required GLES 3.x for full support. GLES 2.x was always holding pi3 back, for the most part.

i should think the new CPU should allow for full speed current MAME also, but we will see...

WOW! that sounds too good to be true! :O
Thanks for info darkcushions.

I imagine it would match the Odroid XU4 at least which means saturn should be coming as that needed the 3.x support on the GPU.

[tpo1990]

This is great news. It will unlock more possible source ports to build and get them to run on future builds when it comes to the Raspberry Pi 4 thanks to the Open GL ES 3.0 version.

I can imagine that arcade emulation will benefit from this with perhaps a newer Mame version and also possible N64 as well as
the Dreamcast.

I will definitely get the 4 gb version at some point later, thinking that 4 gb could be useful in development and it does not cost much more. RetroPie is not ready yet and waiting will get more hardware accessories available for the new RPI 4. If im lucky the Raspberry Pi 4 could also get discounted in some months as well.

This also lets me thinking that i need to find something to use my RPI 3 for.

I'm glad that i did not buy the RPI 3b+ and hold out for the RPI 4.

[dankcushions]

@ledow said in The new Raspberry Pi 4 is here!!:

Not if the graphics updates are just MESA updates (which they appear they could be according to the github commits). Unless it's accelerated GLES 3.x, then it's just the same hardware trying to do more work.

It provides 3.x "capability", i.e. it can take 3.x GL instructions, but that doesn't mean it's automatically faster than just doing the 2.x equivalent unless it has specific hardware acceleration for it.

i'm fairly sure it is:

I’ve just pushed a “vc5” branch to my Mesa tree (https://github.com/anholt/mesa/commits/vc5). This is the culmination of a couple of months of work on building a new driver for Broadcom’s V3D 3.3. V3D 3.3 is a GLES3.1 part, though I’m nowhere near conformance yet. This driver is for BCM7268, a set-top-box SOC that boots an upstream Linux kernel. I’m really excited to be working on a modern GLES implementation, and one that has its core platform support upstream already.

but note that this isn't even neccesarily a speed thing - the pi1-3 simply couldn't run GLES 3.x instruction set, which meant it uses slower, less accurate GLES 2.x pathways, or it couldn't run certain 3d emulators at all.

it was never a GPU speed issue. even in n64 games with slowdown, 9/10 the slowdown would be caused by one or both of: nonoptimal GLES2 pathway, very slow system bus. both of these issues should be eliminated with the pi4.

[ellohir]

@dankcushions said in The new Raspberry Pi 4 is here!!:

it was never a GPU speed issue. even in n64 games with slowdown, 9/10 the slowdown would be caused by one or both of: nonoptimal GLES2 pathway, very slow system bus. both of these issues should be eliminated with the pi4.

Thanks for that explanation! I'll wait for some benchmarks before making a decision though (and for the new Retropie release that's coming soon).

But I'm happy that N64 emulation can take advantage of the new GLES 3.x. Do Mupen64Plus-next and Reicast already support it? It's so difficult to follow these different forks, platforms and api's...

[dankcushions]

@ellohir

Do Mupen64Plus-next and Reicast already support it? It's so difficult to follow these different forks, platforms and api's...

yes... but we will probably have to wait for them to support/compile for the new hardware's capabilities. it should be reasonably quick to happen but no-one has the hardware in their hands yet!

[koggaccio]

Just ordered the 2GB version :)

[sirhenrythe5th]

to summarize: is it smart to order one now too?

I guess it will take a couple of weeks until a retropie-version for the Pi4 will be released, right?
I also read that a new raspbian will be released (if not required) for the Pi4.

So am i right when is say that orinary users have some time and dont have to order at once?

[tpo1990]

@sirhenrythe5th I think you are right. RetroPie is probably not ready yet due to requiring a new kernel for the Raspberry Pi 4B hardware.

I think it is best to still wait on buying the new RPI 4B until RetroPie is supported for that model. In the mean time we can use our RPI 3b/3b+ unless you have other specific purpose of use for the RPI 4B. :-)

[dankcushions]

i think it depends on how willing you are to rebuild, experiment and so on. none of the retropie developers have one yet so i think it's fair to say that it could be weeks before an initial image is released.

[tpo1990]

@dankcushions said in The new Raspberry Pi 4 is here!!:

a

It may take longer than just weeks. It does take some time in developing RetroPie updates, especially the next big version. RetroPie Version 4.5 is the next update in line.

[ellohir]

@dankcushions said in The new Raspberry Pi 4 is here!!:

yes... but we will probably have to wait for them to support/compile for the new hardware's capabilities. it should be reasonably quick to happen but no-one has the hardware in their hands yet!

Great! Good to know! As I said, I'm excited to see the improvements and benchmarks on the new model 😄

[hhromic]

The new RPI4 seems to require the freshly released Raspbian Buster to work.
So I would hold my horses a bit for RetroPie to catch-up with such change.
Hopefully things don't take too much work, but lots of testing is in order :)

[Ecks]

The one thing i am hoping for is better Mame emulation because it would be nice to have a Pi and at least the 2gb memory model handle games like Golden Axe: The Revenge of Death Adder and Killer Instinct 1 and 2 because i love those games and would be great for my barcade.