Question Can you expand the memory Raspberry Pi 2GB board?

[drjohnnyfever]

I have a little game renderer, one of those Amazon Specials, with all the 1980's arcade games and consoles on a micro sd card. It's a little jumpy on the more modern games and I was wondering if there is a way to add memory to it or expand to a better gpu or whatever might be possible to make it perform a little better? I'm asking from a point of total ignorance on anything Raspberry Pi.

I was able to figure out without taking it apart that it is a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 2GB variant. But that's all I know.

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Memory is soldered to the board and is not removable/replaceable by the user (unless you are well skilled in surface mount soldering. They are purchased as 2GB, 4GB, or 8GB and used as is.

 

[TerryLaze]

I have a little game renderer,

??
SD card?

Because larger games need to read a lot more data and a slow sd card will cause longer waits, but it's not a guarantee, it might just be the best the pi can do.
You can watch a few youtube videos on pi emulation, that will show if your games run worse then they do for others.
Also the OS (frontend) they load into can have an affect on how games play, some are even made to do some overclocking on the pi and will make it run somewhat better.

 

[drjohnnyfever]

??
SD card?

Because larger games need to read a lot more data and a slow sd card will cause longer waits, but it's not a guarantee, it might just be the best the pi can do.
You can watch a few youtube videos on pi emulation, that will show if your games run worse then they do for others.
Also the OS (frontend) they load into can have an affect on how games play, some are even made to do some overclocking on the pi and will make it run somewhat better.

I didn't consider that part. I'll look into it.

??
SD card?

Because larger games need to read a lot more data and a slow sd card will cause longer waits, but it's not a guarantee, it might just be the best the pi can do.
You can watch a few youtube videos on pi emulation, that will show if your games run worse then they do for others.
Also the OS (frontend) they load into can have an affect on how games play, some are even made to do some overclocking on the pi and will make it run somewhat better.

Yeah, so the soldering was what I was wondering about. Could another ram just be added to the existing? Like soldered on top or the bottom of the board?
Can you elaborate a little on the frontend and if I might be able to update that?

As I said, this is out of my knowledge zone. I'm going to get it going this weekend on a different tv, so any info about settings or other things I might want to look at first would be appreciated.

I'm still interested in understanding the ram upgrade. It seems that this is a variant of a 4gb or 8gb board.

 

[BFG-9000]

The most direct swap would be to go from 2GB to 4GB. 8GB is possible but the factory 8GB models came with an additional VRM so stability would be unknown. 16GB is probably not possible. There's only one spot for RAM so you would have to remove the original x32 chip + replace with a compatible one. And unless you can DIY it would make much more sense to just buy an 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 and swap it in.

Note that performance is equivalent to a dozen-year old tablet so the amount of RAM may not actually be what's limiting, given that tablets back then only had 2GB. So it may be best of all to buy a newer emulator based on the much faster Raspberry Pi 5