Raspberry Pi 5 4GB Versus 8GB: Pi vs Pi

[Admin]

Do you need the full Raspberry Pi 5 8GB experience? Of course, you do but could you get away with a 4GB model?

Raspberry Pi 5 4GB Versus 8GB: Pi vs Pi : Read more

 

[bit_user]

Had to LOL at the graphs labelled "... Faster is better."

Should say either Lower or Higher. It depends on the graph, since one is measured in runs per minute (should be: Higher is better) and one is measuring seconds per task (should be: Lower is better).

Does more RAM make for a faster boot? Absolutely not.

I see no reason to think it would. If that 1-second timing difference is repeatable, then I'd guess the Pi might be doing some kind of fast memory test, as part of the boot process.

Otherwise, I see no reason to believe more memory would be slower (unless it's higher-ranked and comes at a speed or latency penalty).

On the Raspberry Pi 5 4GB the compression took 75 seconds, surprisingly the same compression took 84 seconds on the 8GB. The reason for this difference is unclear

How consistent were these results? Was the same exact SD card used? I'd go a step further and make sure to test each for multiple iterations, doing all of the following, in between:

sync
echo 3 | sudo tee /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
sudo fstrim -a

Granted, fstrim is a little bit overkill between each run, assuming you've got plenty of free space and do it before you start benchmarking.

For day-to-day tasks, 4GB is plenty for most makers. The extra $20 for the Raspberry Pi 5 8GB is worth your money should this be your only Raspberry Pi. But if not, then you can save some dollars and opt for the 4GB.

My advice would be to spring for the 8 GB, if you're planning on using the Pi as a sort of desktop-substitute. In this case, your memory needs will probably only grow over time. Websites and client programs have a tendency to consume more and more resources, which explains why we didn't even need 1 GB to browse the web 20 years ago.

When using the Pi for specific, defined workloads (especially in a non-desktop capacity), or when money is tight, then definitely consider whether you really need 8 GB. Where the decision gets tricky is like when purchasing a large number of units for a school district.

 

[HideOut]

But...now that there is a 5 with 8G more things might be created that can use it. Just sayin.

 

[usertests]

A 2 GB model could do pretty well if it's really cheap. Last time around it was $45, dropped to $35 with the 1 GB model discontinued, and then spiked back to $45 with the 1 GB model re-introduced.

$50 would be a tough sell if you can double the RAM for $10 (and many people have to pay shipping on top whatever the price is). They might try a $45 MSRP again.

 

[bit_user]

But...now that there is a 5 with 8G more things might be created that can use it. Just sayin.

There's also an 8 GB model of the Pi 4. It didn't come out at launch, but like a year later.

 

[Giroro]

So the Pi 5 8GB generally used more ram to do the same jobs slightly slower, why?

 

[bit_user]

So the Pi 5 8GB generally used more ram to do the same jobs slightly slower, why?

I wish we had visibility into the testing methodology, with particular focus on how many times each test case was run and the variance therein. Otherwise, we can't know the amount of baseline variability or whether some of the results are simply due to that.

Furthermore, because these must be different physical boards, there ought to be some "control" workload that should be identical between them (i.e. some CPU-intensive, memory-light benchmark). We don't know how consistently they're clocking or whether one might be throttling more than the other. It would also be nice to know if either is encountering any thermal throttling, in which case differences in heatsink application could come into play.

I'll just say that I wouldn't be surprised if each test was run only once and if there was no "control".

Finally, the results probably should've been summarized. That part is easy enough:

Test	4 GiB​	8 GiB​	Improvement (8 GiB)​
Boot Time	21.08​	22.14​	-4.8%​
Chromium: Speedomer	66.4​	61.9​	-6.8%​
Firefox: Speedomer	57.3​	54.8​	-4.4%​
File Compression	75​	84​	-10.7%​

Other than "random variation", why could 8 GiB slower than 4? Well, aside from the raw hardware factors I mentioned in my post, other explanations that come to mind are that the browser is simply going longer between when its garbage collections needs to run, which is then causing it to take disproportionately longer, when it does. That's not a terribly satisfying explanation, but I'm not going to put a whole lot more thought into the matter, without knowing the quality of the underlying data.

These performance differences aren't huge, but they're big enough to raise real questions and warrant either a more thorough follow-up or perhaps someone independently attempting to reproduce them.

 

[GordKS]

Thanks! I just ordered a 4G Pi 5 a few days back. I have never had a memory problem with my 4G Pi 4 so I could not see the need for 8G. And the wait for the 4G version is shorter as well.
BTW, your mention of extremely long wait times when starting a browser in limited memory really hit home here. I just got a Zero 2 W a few days back and wanted to see just how much it could do with only half a gig of memory. It is fine if you don't try multitask too much. But it does choke immediately when trying to start almost any browser. Epiphany gets a bit farther, but not much farther. Puffin though, is shocking! Using cloud computing to do most of the work allows me to even watch YouTube videos smoothly with no stumbling or lip-sync problems. This is running 32 bit Raspian Bullseye. It uses about 125mb doing nothing and 250 to 260 playing full screen video from YouTube, via Puffin, while driving a bluetooth speaker with no lip-sync problems at all. I still find myself scratching my head while saying "No way!". If you are caught needing to access the net while working with limited memory, try it. It works, and if I ever get to the limit where they want me to pay for the service, it is dirt cheap as well.

 

[bit_user]

allows me to even watch YouTube videos smoothly with no stumbling or lip-sync problems. This is running 32 bit Raspian Bullseye. It uses about 125mb doing nothing and 250 to 260 playing full screen video from YouTube, via Puffin, while driving a bluetooth speaker with no lip-sync problems at all. I still find myself scratching my head while saying "No way!".

The Playstation 3 has only 256 MB of RAM and works as a fully-compliant blu-ray player that can do 1080p/60 playback of H.264. In fact, I'm sure it's far from the lowest spec blu-ray player ever made.