$50 (approximately 357 RMB), the more affordable Raspberry Pi 5 is here!

Just now, Raspberry Pi announced the official launch of the Raspberry Pi 5 with a 2GB version, and it is available for immediate purchase.

To cut costs, the CPU has also been revised, but the only change users will notice is in the memory.

Apart from that, everything else remains the original recipe.

Seeing the price drop of Raspberry Pi, some netizens are very happy, praising this move as a good one, and the 2GB of memory is enough for their needs.

For more specific details, let's take a look together~

With less memory, the chip has also been updated

The 2GB version launched this time is priced at $50, which is 16.6% cheaper than the $60 4GB version and 37.5% cheaper than the $80 8GB version.

According to the official statement from Raspberry Pi, this $10 difference is a real reduction in cost.

So, to achieve such cost savings, in addition to the reduction in memory, Raspberry Pi has also made some modifications to the CPU.The BCM2712C1 (hereinafter referred to as C1) used in the 4GB and 8GB versions has been replaced with the newly revised BCM2712D0 (hereinafter referred to as D0). Of course, the core remains the 2.4GHz quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 application processor, along with the latest version of the VideoCore multimedia platform. Raspberry Pi has stated that the C1 chip contains features "designed to serve other markets," which are not needed in Raspberry Pi. Therefore, the D0 version has directly chosen to remove the modules corresponding to these features, which are also permanently disabled through software in the C1. The simplification of the CPU, coupled with the reduction in memory, has allowed Raspberry Pi to successfully reduce the cost by $10 per unit. As for other configurations, they remain consistent with the 4/8GB versions. However, a key question is whether the Raspberry Pi's memory, after being halved, is still sufficient? Is 2GB of memory enough? According to the official statement from Raspberry Pi, choosing the smaller 2GB version of memory is simply a cost-saving option. The confidence behind Raspberry Pi's statement lies in its self-developed operating system, Raspberry Pi OS, which can focus on optimizing resource usage.Even on older devices with performance far below today's flagship products, the Raspberry Pi operating system can still provide a good user experience, not to mention just a reduction in memory.

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On new devices, the Raspberry Pi system consumes much fewer resources than most general Linux distributions.

Of course, actual performance should be judged by data.

Regarding the newly released 2GB version of the Raspberry Pi 5, Tom's Hardware conducted a review at the earliest opportunity.

First, the conclusion: Tom's Hardware believes that the only perceptible difference for users in this 2GB version is the RAM.

As for the chip revision, since the removed features were not usable in the first place, their impact on users can be considered negligible.

Next, let's look at the specific results.

In terms of boot time, the 2GB version takes 22.42 seconds, while the 4GB and 8GB versions take 21.08 and 22.14 seconds, respectively, showing almost no difference.

The second test is the system's RAM usage. Under cold boot conditions and without any interactive operations, the system RAM usage of the 2GB version is 642MB, slightly higher than the 566MB of the 4/8GB versions, but it does not affect the overall operation.

The following tests are related to the browser. Tom's Hardware conducted experiments using both Chromium and Firefox browsers, with indicators including startup speed, memory usage, and Browserbench Speedometer scores.The difference in startup time is not significant, and even the 2GB version starts Firefox slightly faster than the other two versions.

Next is memory usage, it can be seen that both browsers consume less memory on the 2GB version than on the 4 and 8GB versions.

However, for Chromium, the consumption of 1685MB is already approaching the 2GB memory bottleneck.

This means that if there is a need to open more than 10 pages at once, it is necessary to consider choosing a version with more memory.

The last test for the browser part is Browserbench Speedometer, which is a JavaScript performance tool, and the evaluation standard is the number of test runs that can be completed per minute.

The result shows that the 2GB version is slightly inferior on Chromium, but it surpasses the other two models on Firefox.

After testing the browsers, the next task for the three devices is a file compression task, specifically using the gzip command to compress a 1.4GB ISO image.

The final time taken is 93, 75, and 74 seconds, respectively, which should be considered acceptable, but if there is a need for fast compression in daily use, this difference is worth paying attention to.

The last test is for gaming scenarios, Tom's Hardware tried to compile and run the Dolphin emulator for Nintendo GameCube and Wii games.The results of the compilation on the 2GB version ended in failure, but it can run on other models with pre-compiled versions; of course, memory is also tight.

So, Tom's Hardware ultimately suggests:

If you are certain that you do not need much memory, 2GB is worth considering; if you are unsure, it is safer to choose 4GB; if you want to play games or engage in machine learning, then go for 8GB.

During the testing process, Tom's Hardware also discovered, based on the silkscreen information on the device, that Raspberry Pi may launch a 1GB version in the future.

So, at least in the view of Raspberry Pi officials, 2GB is sufficient to meet the needs of some people.

One More Thing

In the same month, Raspberry Pi also released another new product - the microcontroller Pico 2, priced at $5.

Pico 2 features a new RP2350 chip, with significantly improved performance. Although it cannot run Linux, it still offers a rich set of functions.

Pico 2 maintains consistency with the previous generation Pico in terms of form factor and electrical compatibility, while providing more GPIO interfaces and external storage options.Please provide the text you would like translated into English.