The Raspberry Pi 5 has just been unveiled and the latest version of the compact computer board will go on sale in October.
It’s been more than four years since the Raspberry Pi 4 hit shelves (June 2019), and the new Pi 5 promises to be a big step forward from its predecessor for hobbyists, as you’d expect. In fact, the Pi 5 is said to be at least twice as fast – or even three times – as fast as the previous version of the board.
Although you wouldn’t say so from the outside, which remains largely the same at first glance.
So, to break things down into details: what exactly are we getting here in terms of upgrades over the previous Raspberry Pi?
Major upgrades to improve the performance of your Pi projects
The new engine for the Raspberry Pi 5 is a quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 CPU running at 2.4 GHz, and this is a significant upgrade compared to the Pi 4 (which, if you recall, had a chip that reached a top speed of 1.8 GHz) . Much of the extra raw performance grunt for the Pi 5 is of course packed into this new chip.
Additionally, there’s a VideoCore VII GPU running at 800MHz, which we’re told will offer a significant boost in graphics performance.
With connectivity there are a pair of HDMI outputs, allowing you to connect two 4K displays (at 60Hz, with HDR support), as well as two USB 3.0 ports, a pair of USB 2.0 ports and Gigabit Ethernet, along with with a microSD card slot. With the latter, support for the SDR104 mode means that the performance of the SD card is no less doubled.
The Pi 5 also comes with in-house silicon for the first time in the form of the RP1 Southbridge (the part of the motherboard that enables communication with connected peripherals). We’re told this represents a significant leap in peripheral performance, enabling much faster transfer speeds to external drives, for example.
The Pi 5 also features a pair of four-lane 1.5 Gbps MIPI transceivers, allowing the connection of up to two cameras (or displays). In addition, a new single-lane PCI Express 2.0 interface is available.
For wireless connectivity we have Bluetooth 5.0 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), with dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi (now known as Wi-Fi 5).
The Pi 5 comes in two variants, and as before, one runs with 8GB of system RAM, and the other is more modestly equipped with 4GB, with prices at $80 / £79 / AU$95 and $60 / £60 /AU$125 respectively. That’s slightly more expensive than its predecessor, but not meaningfully so (an increase of $5 in both cases).
As mentioned, the Pi 5 will be available at some point in October, but pre-orders are open now.
Analysis: A great looking device – with a few potential Raspberry wrinkles
With pre-ordering starting early, there is already some pessimism about unit availability and the reality of the October launch, and how that will play out with what is expected to be a significant rush for the new Raspberry Pi 5 to get. With previous fluctuations around stock levels no doubt still looming large in the minds of computer enthusiasts).
There was indeed a bit of sour surrounding the expectation that was previously raised that the Pi 5 wouldn’t hit the market until next year. Some people recently bought a Pi 4 and didn’t want to wait until 2024, and are now expressing their dismay at only having to hold out for another month before the new, much-improved board comes out. At least in theory, if production and delivery go smoothly enough.
Still, none of this should take away from the fact that the Raspberry Pi 5 looks like an impressive upgrade for the compact board – a very important one, especially with the performance boost brought about by the shiny new Arm Cortex-A76 CPU.
The potential sticking point, aside from the issues around how quickly you can realistically get a Pi 5 to market, is if The edge (who spotted the launch) points out that the device gets “pretty hot.” However, there is an option to add an active cooler (mini fan) to help with the thermals (for an additional $5, as pictured above).