Raspberry Pi 4 Launches With More Power and Options Than Ever Before

Raspberry Pi fans have a lot to be excited about this week. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is launching the fourth-generation Pi, and there is a ton of massive upgrades throughout the board — literally.

The new Pi 4 comes with a new 1.5GHz quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 CPU, offering 3x the performance over the last generation. Raspberry Pi 4 also now comes with more options for the memory, and for the first time ever you can choose between 3 different RAM variations. You can get the entry-level, $35 Pi 4 with 1GB RAM, or pay $10 more to get 2GB and pay $20 more for the 4GB RAM variant.

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday — and get free copies of Paul Thurrott's Windows 11 and Windows 10 Field Guides (normally $9.99) as a special welcome gift!

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

The new Pi 4 also makes a massive change to the ports. First, the power connector now uses a Type-C port, which also allows for extra current to get through to the board. The new Pi also gets rid of the full-sized HDMI port, replacing it with two type-D micro HDMI ports, which introduces dual monitor support and lets the Pi 4 power two 4K displays at a time. Oh, it also comes with two USB 3 ports along with with the previous two USB 2 ports.

The device also comes with integrated Bluetooth 5.0, full-throughput Gigabit ethernet, and dual-band 802.11ac wireless networking. The Raspberry Pi Foundation is also launching a bunch of new accessories to go along with the new design of the Pi 4, all of which are available today.

Tagged with

Share post

Please check our Community Guidelines before commenting

Conversation 28 comments

  • dontbe evil

    24 June, 2019 - 5:17 am

    <p>can't wait to get it and install windows iot</p>

    • Thomas Parkison

      24 June, 2019 - 10:32 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#437054">In reply to dontbe_evil:</a></em></blockquote><p>Me too, I'd like to turn one of these into a cheap NAS for external USB hard drives.</p>

      • remc86007

        24 June, 2019 - 2:03 pm

        <blockquote><a href="#437104"><em>In reply to trparky:</em></a><em> </em> I'd love for Brad or Paul to do this and do a writeup about it. I'd love to buy one of these and set it up as a NAS, but I don't have any experience using Windows IOT.</blockquote><p><br></p>

        • lvthunder

          Premium Member
          24 June, 2019 - 3:55 pm

          <blockquote><em><a href="#437169">In reply to remc86007:</a></em></blockquote><p>If all you want is a NAS I wouldn't put Windows on it. There are Linux distros purposely built to be a NAS.</p>

      • waethorn

        24 June, 2019 - 9:11 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#437104">In reply to trparky:</a></em></blockquote><p>It makes for a bad NAS. See my comment here.</p>

  • christian.hvid

    24 June, 2019 - 5:21 am

    <p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">"…and there is a ton of massive upgrades throughout the board —&nbsp;</span><em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">literally</em><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">."</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Just so you know, a ton is </span><em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">literally</em><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> 1,000 kilograms. Or 2,000 pounds, depending on where you live. Either way, it would </span><em style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">literally</em><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> make the RPI 4 the heaviest circuit board on Earth.</span></p>

    • wright_is

      Premium Member
      24 June, 2019 - 8:27 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#437055">In reply to christian.hvid:</a></em></blockquote><p>Actually, a ton is 2000 pounds, a tonne is 1000 kilograms or 2,240 pounds. ;-)</p>

      • christian.hvid

        24 June, 2019 - 9:10 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#437080">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><p>Except if you're in the U.S. where a tonne is called a metric ton, right? And then there's short ton, long ton, shit-ton… enough to make your head spin. :)</p><p><br></p>

        • wright_is

          Premium Member
          24 June, 2019 - 10:02 am

          <blockquote><em><a href="#437085">In reply to christian.hvid:</a></em></blockquote><p>Don't get me started on US English! </p><p>Shall we talk about Americans dropping the middle syllable out of aluminium? </p><p>Or the fact they drop 3 zeros on a billion, using the half-arsed, sorry, short scale billion and not the international long scale billion? The US billion is what the rest of the world would call a milliard, although it has crept into use in the UK over the last decade or so… Over here, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft were the first billion dollar companies, in America, the first trillion dollar companies.</p><p>I'm only kidding, I've gotten used to the Americanisms over the years. :-D</p>

          • christian.hvid

            24 June, 2019 - 10:35 am

            <blockquote><em><a href="#437097">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><p>I suspect that the whole point of the short-scale system is to avoid the awkwardness of having to call 10^15 "a billiard". :)</p>

    • SWCetacean

      Premium Member
      24 June, 2019 - 1:13 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#437055">In reply to christian.hvid:</a></em></blockquote><p>I think Mehedi was trying to pun off of the phrase "across the board". I think the sentence would flow better if it had been written as "… and there is a ton of massive upgrades across the board — literally". And there, the "literally" would make sense because the upgrades are on components spread throughout the circuit board.</p>

      • christian.hvid

        24 June, 2019 - 2:43 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#437162">In reply to SWCetacean:</a></em></blockquote><p>You're absolutely right – I thought he meant "literally a ton", which is how people tend to express themselves these days when they're really speaking figuratively or metaphorically. My apologies to Mehedi.</p>

  • Bill Strong

    24 June, 2019 - 5:31 am

    <p>So, it has 2 HDMI ports, did they upgrade the graphics on the board then?</p>

    • christian.hvid

      24 June, 2019 - 5:51 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#437057">In reply to Bill_Strong:</a></em></blockquote><p>According to Tom's Hardware, they have upgraded the GPU from a 400 MHz VideoCore IV to a 500 MHz VideoCore VI, giving about 50% better graphics performance. It's still probably on the weak side for some applications.</p>

    • cr08

      24 June, 2019 - 8:55 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#437057">In reply to Bill_Strong:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>Greatly. Essentially a brand new modern SOC. The GPU supports up to a single 4k60 output or 2x 4k30. Can now do H265 4k60 decoding and hardware supports HDR (needs software to catch up right now).</p><p><br></p><p>Other big changes: 2x USB 3.0 ports with the USB chipset having a proper fast PCIe link back to the SOC for up to 4GB/s shared between the 4 ports. Gigabit ethernet now has a dedicated link back to the SOC vs using a USB to Ethernet chip (with the Pi 3B it was limited to USB 2 speeds at roughly ~300mbit/s)</p>

      • waethorn

        24 June, 2019 - 9:14 pm

        <blockquote><em><a href="#437082">In reply to cr08:</a></em></blockquote><p>It was the 3B+ that had "Gigabit" Ethernet.</p><p><br></p><p>The regular 3B was 100Mbps.</p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    24 June, 2019 - 5:48 am

    <p>Great improvement, especially the ethernet port now being circa 2002 standard! Now, if only it were PoE, that would be the icing on the cake. Only one wire running to the box (I run my Pis headless, just network and power cables).</p>

    • IanYates82

      Premium Member
      24 June, 2019 - 7:42 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#437058">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><p>PoE would be smart.</p><p><br></p><p>I'm using injectors at work to power some phones. Can you get a reverse-injector (dejector)?</p>

    • mattbg

      Premium Member
      24 June, 2019 - 10:05 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#437058">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><p>PoE hat?</p><p><br></p><p><a href="https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/poe-hat/&quot; target="_blank">https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/poe-hat/</a></p&gt;

      • wright_is

        Premium Member
        24 June, 2019 - 10:39 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#437099">In reply to mattbg:</a></em></blockquote><p>Yep, just a shame it isn't now part of the basic system, but it would probably add too much to the cost.</p>

  • MachineGunJohn

    24 June, 2019 - 9:34 am

    <p>Bummer they didn't announce an upgrade to the zero-w at the same time. I hope they have one coming soon.</p>

  • bluvg

    24 June, 2019 - 11:03 am

    <p>Literally a ton? I thought these were supposed to be lightweight. :P</p>

  • roland00

    24 June, 2019 - 1:13 pm

    <p>A cortex a72 is quite impressive we are finally getting Raspberry Pi moving to the big cores. Sure there is also an a73, a75, and a76 but this Raspberry Pi 4 is on an 28nm foundry so getting the best tech you can get from 2015 is great and remember the device is only $35 to $55 dollars.</p>

  • Bill Strong

    24 June, 2019 - 3:44 pm

    <p>Honestly, I am looking at this thing and thinking, "I wonder if this will be a usable thing client for my unRaid build?" If so, I could get 3 of these, and let 3 people sign in to my Win10 VM. this would allow me to cut the cost of electricity by a large margin in the house.</p><p><br></p><p>And if I want more terminals, like on in my room, it is only $35-$55 bucks. And I can set it up to play retro games for my Mom, who wants to be able to play the original Marios.</p><p><br></p><p>I can then focus on upgrading one box when we need more power to do things, or with reducing our electric bills. I can save up for large amounts of memory, instead of having to spread it between 3 or 4 machines.</p><p><br></p><p>The performance of previous Pi weren't quite at the level I wanted them to be at to do this. I will wait and see reviews for this machine in that capacity.</p>

    • waethorn

      24 June, 2019 - 9:13 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#437212">In reply to Bill_Strong:</a></em></blockquote><p>You can only sign into a Windows desktop environment with one user at a time. You need Terminal Services to allow multiple simultaneous logins, or the hosted Windows on Azure service that allows it (subscription $$).</p>

  • waethorn

    24 June, 2019 - 9:10 pm

    <p>It's not all rainbows and unicorns. The USB controller shares 4Gbps amongst ALL of the ports. That's not even full USB 3.0. I'm not even sure that this could apply for USB certification with that limitation. Benchmarks show that SATA 6Gbps SSD's in a USB 3.0 enclosure get about 350MBps. That's about 200MBps less than they would otherwise.</p><p><br></p><p>The SD card reader is twice as fast as the previous incarnation, but the old Pi 3b/3b+ SD interface was anemic at best, so that's hardly an improvement. They say "if you want speed, you should use a USB SSD". I'd say "if you want speed, you should shop elsewhere".</p><p><br></p><p>So all in all, it's not great as a NAS device, if you were thinking of setting one up as a server. As a desktop, when you're hampered by poor video performance that results in a lack of choices in desktop environments for Linux (like the mainstream GNOME 3 or KDE), it's better to look at other options. In the coming days and weeks, you'll see people make videos of desktop distros like Ubuntu and Fedora running on it and you'll see how the GPU handles a mainstream DE. On a Pi 3b+, GNOME3 and KDE are unusable. ARM GPU's are made for mobile environments using OpenGL ES, not the "full" OpenGL, and normally only on Android. On Android, you have major ARM chip makers making proprietary firmware and drivers with closed source binary blobs if not wholly closed-source drivers for the Android kernel. Open source hardware is rarely fast, so I don't expect this to change with the release of the 4b. The 3b/3b+ still doesn't have proper hardware acceleration for desktop composition needed for mainstream DE's, and running YouTube videos with it requires a janky browser plugin, and you get NO video acceleration in other websites despite the hardware supporting H.264 decode. That hardware video decode only works in specific software applications for local media. It's crap.</p><p><br></p><p>If you want a cheap desktop computer that runs any number of desktop environments on Linux, you go with any cheap x86 processor like a budget fanless Apollo/Gemini Lake Celeron. ARM is just a bunch of headaches due to every ARM chip platform having some kind of odd-ball firmware and bootloader configuration. You can see this by way of every Linux distro having some ludicrous way of "flashing" firmware and/or the OS for each and every different ARM processor instead of having a standardized installation method from setup software. At least with x86, you can do a standard installation, and any Intel iGPU will have good support that'll do everything, short of play triple-A games.</p>

  • bill_russell

    24 June, 2019 - 9:36 pm

    <p>these things really should have nothing to do with being considered as a "desktop computer" and then the "suprise" that they are practically unusable for that. I've always wondered why they even come with HDMI ports and desktop environments. </p><p>Its fun trying them out and playing around, as linux is, but unless you have some practical dedicated purpose, it will end up in a drawer. </p><p>These are back end embedded boards. The most used one I have currently is an octoprint server for a 3d printer.</p><p><br></p>

  • EricWhite12

    02 September, 2019 - 7:33 pm

    <p>Hopefully the <a href="https://www.hlplanet.com/best-retropie-gaming-kits/&quot; target="_blank">Retropie</a> will work great with this version aswell</p>

Windows Intelligence In Your Inbox

Sign up for our new free newsletter to get three time-saving tips each Friday

"*" indicates required fields

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Thurrott © 2024 Thurrott LLC