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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/specifications/

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/raspberry-pi-4-b,6193.html

https://www.anandtech.com/show/14581/raspberry-pi-4-launched-quad-cortex-a72-project-board-for-35-dollars

https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi-issues/MagPi83.pdf

Major improvements across the "board". The quad-core Cortex-A72 with other improvements is anywhere from 25% to 300% faster than the A53 used in the Raspberry Pi 3 . No eMMC but an SSD could be used with one of the two new USB 3 ports (booting from USB or Ethernet not supported at launch, should be ready within weeks). There are three RAM options: 1 GB ($35), 2 GB ($45), 4 GB ($55). The RAM is now LPDDR4 instead of LPDDR2. The 2 GB option is a bit unnecessary IMO and seems to be the least popular, as it's the model least likely to be sold out online (as far as I can tell). Ethernet speed can actually hit close to 1 Gbps (943 Mbps), up from 237 Mbps. There is Bluetooth 5.0 support but I haven't seen any testing related to that (I would love to use it for longer range audio transmission to BT 5.0 headphones).

RasPi 3 cases are incompatible due to some port shuffling. There are now two micro-HDMI ports instead of one full size HDMI, so you probably need a new cable. The device can output to two 4K displays at 30 FPS, or one 4K display at 60 FPS (presumably two 1080p displays @ 60+ FPS, and so on). Although the new GPU has 4K@60Hz H.265 decode support, actually streaming 4K and even lower resolutions on Raspbian had issues in testing, that will hopefully be resolved with updates soon. LibreELEC developers have been working with the Pi Foundation for months to support the Pi 4, and have an alpha version out.

Power draw and heat are up. You'll probably want a FLIRC case or something that can provide cooling. Power is now provided using a USB Type-C cable. Due to a screw up by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, some USB-C cables don't work. But the ones that do work should be the cheapest.

Can it run TDM? The CPU and GPU are much better and the potentially quadrupled RAM could be a big help. The 4 GB version can be a legitimate desktop replacement for many users, albeit with some quirks.

Edited by jaxa
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This thing looks cool, but sadly they F'd up the USB-c port, so some USB adapters will not feed it any voltage when plugged in. But I'm guessing we're to the point now that it would run TDM reasonably well, especially the 4GB variant.

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1 hour ago, kano said:

This thing looks cool, but sadly they F'd up the USB-c port, so some USB adapters will not feed it any voltage when plugged in. But I'm guessing we're to the point now that it would run TDM reasonably well, especially the 4GB variant.

My initial thoughts on the USB-C thing were pretty harsh, but thinking about it more I don't care as much. A bunch of cables do work (see link), the ones that have the broken feature tend to be more expensive, and I would probably dedicate a cable/power supply to the RasPi 24/7 and not use it for anything else.

Looks like TDM would still require some leg work to compile on ARM, but it's much less of a fool's errand now:

OpenGL ES 2.0 -> OpenGL ES 3.0
1 GB RAM -> 4 GB RAM (shared with GPU in both cases)
4x Cortex-A53 -> 4x Cortex-A72
23.5 MB/s read performance -> 45.7 MB/s (microSD) or higher (SSD)
27.8 FPS -> 41.4 FPS (720p OpenArena)

OpenArena is id Tech 3 whereas TDM is id Tech 4. But we can see a definitive performance uplift and that extra RAM would be crucial for TDM. The Raspberry Pi 4 might be more powerful than other systems users have tried to run it on.

If not, Raspberry Pi 5 will probably seal the deal when that is released 2-3 years from now.

Official support for TDM on RasPi 4 would be pretty neat, and might be a good way to attract new members if we can spread the word on RasPi-oriented sites.

Edited by jaxa
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According to what I'm finding so far, actual Bluetooth 5 features may be non-existent:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=245492&p=1499926
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=244386#p1497702

Looks like you can't expect higher speeds, longer range, or any particular benefit at all. I'm not sure if there would be any positive outcome from using a Bluetooth 5 device with RasPi 4, so it may be a very misleading selling point. Seems like with any two Bluetooth devices, one of them will be the weakest link. If it's as bad as claimed, attaching a BT5 USB dongle to the Pi might yield better results.

https://www.androidauthority.com/bluetooth-5-speed-range-762369/

Bluetooth 5 can potentially "double" or "quadruple" range, knocking max data rate down to 500 Kbps or 125 Kbps respectively. If you were to use a super-efficient audio codec like Opus, 100 Kbps should be more than enough for podcasts and even streaming music. But when I was researching Bluetooth 5 headphones, I found zero indication of Opus support anywhere, with many of them relying on the old SBC codec, even though Opus or any other codec could be added as an optional extension to A2DP. Here's some discussion.

Someone compared RasPi 4 CPU performance to the Intel Core2 Duo T5600, a 2006 dual-core mobile chip with a 34 W TDP. I'm not sure if I buy that, and it's hard to find good direct comparisons right now. Also, a fresh new firmware update has apparently increased performance while reducing operating temperatures. You might be able to get a substantial boost from having a heatsink, metal case, or small fan. I think it's plausible that RasPi 4 could run some TDM missions at a playable (low) framerate, but more research is needed.

Now for something more interesting. The user guide for the RasPi 4 possibly makes reference to a variant with 8 GB of RAM. See the heated discussion in the comments. There doesn't seem to be an actual 64 Gb (8 GB) LPDDR4 chip with a 32-bit bus, or something like that. Compare to this new 12 GB LPDDR4X chip from Samsung that has a 64-bit bus. I'm in the "more RAM is best" camp, even if on the face of it, it seems absurd to have that amount attached to this device. Raspbian or other desktop-focused OSes should be able to take advantage of the full amount, caching stuff that would otherwise be loaded from a slow microSD card (unless you are booting from an external SSD). Maybe we will see a $75 RasPi 4 variant in 2020 with 8 GB of RAM and fixed USB-C charging implementation. So if you were on the fence about this thing, you could kick the can down the road and see what they do next year. At the same time, 4 GB is going to be enough for a lot of use cases, and the USB-C problem is not that serious.

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Posting from my RasPi 4B. Managed to get one earlier than I expected.

I will see if I can get TDM running on it by myself at some point. Failing that, I'll try NewDark with a thicc fan mission instead.

Edit: So far, pretty good. The system is more responsive than I expected (running everything on a ~$3 32 GB microSD card), which goes to show how crappy my other computers are. RAM usage is about 550-650 MB out of 3906 MB with a few Chromium tabs open, so I have quite the headroom.

YouTube worked fine so far, although I was only doing 480p and I'm using a 720p display instead of 1080p or 4K anyway. Add: Full screen 720p has some screen tearing, and quality looks diminished. That situation could change in a future update.

Edited by jaxa
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Sorry, I'm rather skeptical of emulators unless they translate machine code ahead of time but it's still going to suck with darkmod (SIMD instructions translation?)

Original T/T2? Not sure about practicality of that.

Newdark? Kinda defeats the purpose of new graphics features.

The 'right' way would be porting newdark from source code, provided all the original assembler code optimizations had C counterparts.

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  • 2 months later...

Doom 3 on Raspberry Pi 4 with the GPU overclocked to 600 (620?) MHz, up from 500 MHz. 960x540 resolution. FPS fluctuates a lot but is usually near 20.

The SoC's VideoCore VI GPU can theoretically support OpenGL ES 3.1/3.2 or Vulkan 1.1, which may improve performance, but don't expect drivers to support any of that for another year or two. Maybe OpenGL ES 3.1 sooner.

DarkRadiant 2.6.0 x86 is available on the Debian repository and is running.

Edited by jaxa
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Where is the source code the compiled from?

What they should have benchmarked was Doom3 BFG which is a much more modern, performant, adapted for current hardware version.

Number wise, FPS = TDP. Aren't there Intel Atom based micro PC's that can do the same thing faster and easier?

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  • 8 months later...
  • jaxa changed the title to Raspberry Pi 4, 5

I can't believe that version 5 is already out. That power button really comes handy to power on/off without having to unplug and plug back your adaoter brick. Meanwhile i still have RPi 3 lying around my bookshelf and has been collecting dust sice i bought it early 2017 and can't decide on which low-level project to start. I forgot where did i put the 5V 2.5 ampere adapter and i doubt  type c phone charger with similar power rate could power it stably. I also lost my SD card reader abd apapter as well so I couldn't install latest raspbian image into it. I am planning to learn low level programming using RPi 3

Edited by taffernicus
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