What would you do with 16G of RAM on a Raspberry Pi 5?

Maybe the extra RAM would help it serve instructions to my CNC router. My first attempt failed miserably. ‍

It might be helpful for 3D slicing and graphics editing, but most of us have regular computers for that.

Given how inexpensive the little mini pc computers are now, and how expensive the rpi is getting, you can get a full computer for the price of that pi now. In Canada, I see a little beelink is $159 and a RPi 5 kit is $250.

So maybe a more direct question is: what pi-specific function would require 16gb, that can’t be handled better by a regular computer?

ntewinkel Initially, I thought the same thing.  I have recently turned a Chromebook into a Linux Mint Laptop - although I haven't made the time to really use it - other than surfing the web.  BUT... discrete IO.  That is what the Pi has that my PC doesn't.  I2C.  SPI.  I don't know how to get those out of my laptop.  Of course, with my limited knowledge, I won't be buying a 16GB Pi5 - until I've figured out what to do with all the other Pi's I have. 

I agree, and size too if you’re embedding it. It’s niche applications like that that make it worth it, but I don’t think it makes sense anymore as a general desktop replacement.

And power too - it should be less that a PC.

Not anymore. The Pi 5 uses a significant amount of power now, with a lot of x86 PCs actually using less, while having significantly higher performance.

https://bret.dk/raspberry-pi-5-review/

The Intel N100 machine uses 10% less power at idle, and 85% more at full load, while being a bit over twice as fast as the Pi 5, for a comparable cost. It also has more and upgradable RAM, more USB ports and video outputs. The N100 also has hardware H264/H265 encoding, while the Pi5 has nothing.

The only advantages the RPi has managed to keep are the GPIOs, MIPI, and form factor.
Hooking up a Pi Pico or similar to an N100 machine gives you all the GPIO (and more) back, so realistically, only MIPI and the form factor remain.

Not anymore. The Pi 5 uses a significant amount of power now, with a lot of x86 PCs actually using less, while having significantly higher performance.

https://bret.dk/raspberry-pi-5-review/

The Intel N100 machine uses 10% less power at idle, and 85% more at full load, while being a bit over twice as fast as the Pi 5, for a comparable cost. It also has more and upgradable RAM, more USB ports and video outputs. The N100 also has hardware H264/H265 encoding, while the Pi5 has nothing.

The only advantages the RPi has managed to keep are the GPIOs, MIPI, and form factor.
Hooking up a Pi Pico or similar to an N100 machine gives you all the GPIO (and more) back, so realistically, only MIPI and the form factor remain.

You are right about the cost, but ( me confirmed Intel basher ) I would get a AMD Phenom II 4 cores CPU & Motherboard and never look back! ~~ Cris 

Not to overlook the processor architecture of course, there has been a lot of increased development on arm in recent years.

The issue isn't ARM vs x86 here. It's that Raspberry Pis use close to a decade old technology, while Intel/AMD/Nvidia/Rockchip/etc. are much, much newer.

The Pi 5's SoC is somehow still on 16nm, a node from 2013, with an ARM core from 2018.

The N100 uses the "Intel 7" node from 2020, which is an enhanced 10nm process, using a core design from 2018.

This used to be an advantage for Raspberry Pi, as they were able to make their boards super cheap. However, their prices started going up, and others' prices started going down, and today, an N100 or similar AMD system costs pretty much the same as a Pi, while being more efficient and way faster.

Or another example: RK3588. It uses the same A76 cores as the Pi 5's SoC, but it's made on an 8nm process(and also has four more lower power cores). As expected, the Rk3588 uses significantly less power than the Pi 5, while being slightly faster most of the time.

vmate said:

The issue isn't ARM vs x86 here

People have a penchant for one architecture over the other, often for reasons beyond price, which was more my point.

vmate said:

Or another example: RK3588. It uses the same A76 cores as the Pi 5's SoC, but it's made on an 8nm process(and also has four more lower power cores). As expected, the Rk3588 uses significantly less power than the Pi 5, while being slightly faster most of the time.

Do you have links to the source for your information that you can share?

Sure!

www.youtube.com/watch
From 9:49: RK3588 outperforms Pi5 in Linpack by about 75%, being 70% more efficient per watt. There are other benchmarks too, the RK3588 being faster for almost all of them.

Similar results from here:
https://bret.dk/raspberry-pi-5-review/
Pi 5 idles at 4.7W, N100 at 4.2W, RK3588 at 1.7W.
Pi 5 under load uses 11.6W, RK3588 uses 11W, the N100 uses 21.4W


There is also this, showing the RK3588 being only about 10% faster on average, which seems to be odd,considering the benchmarks from the previous sources, and also doesn't show power consumption data, but here it is anyways:
www.phoronix.com/.../3

cstanton You are right.  I'm one of those people.  So maybe not so much about architecture, but Raspberry Pi has provided me an opportunity to delve deeper into microprocessors than I ever thought possible.  The "ecosystem" is built for "beginners" like me.  How much more powerful or less power hungry other chips are.. totally immaterial to me.

Thanks vmate!

kmikemoo said:

The "ecosystem" is built for "beginners" like me.

That's such a valid point, the availability of the documentation that the Community has created and shared is also invaluable.