Raspberry Pi 5 Benchmarks: Significantly Better Performance, Improved I/O

[Zajec]

The Raspberry Pi 5 is capable of driving two 4K @ 60Hz displays and features 4K @ 60 HEVC decode hardware capabilities.

I found information on RPi forums (coming from moderator) that RPi 4 already supported H.265 (aka HEVC) at 4k. Is that correct?

Does anyone know if Raspberry Pi 5 can decode VP9 and AV1 in hardware?

[chewitt]

There are significant changes in I/O performance over RPi4 .. SD supports SRD104, USB3 runs at 5Gbps on both sockets, LPDDR4 RAM, all the GPIO periperals are now managed by a dedicated RP1 chip (Cortex M3) to add bandwidth and capability. The PCIe connector will open the door to new HATs that can boot the board from flash storage (some are already in development). I'm sure lots more detail on IO changes will appear once all the documentation goes public.

In the RK3358 comparison: It's been around for nearly a year and I'm still waiting for someone to upstream HDMI drivers and media codecs so I don't have to run some horrid quality BSP kernel fork before the distro I work on (LibreELEC) can create a working image. RPi5: I had a functionally complete (to the same level as existing RPi4) image built and running 58 mins after DHL delivered the board sample; It's the least-effort board bring-up I've ever done with the distro. I'm sure Pi devs (and the numerous well-known contractors and development shops they hired to do specific things) will give themselves a short break and beer today, but then pushing code upstream will start.

[drakonas777]

I wish Qualcomm would license their top Snapdragon SoC's for SBC's as well.. these things normally run in smartphones with limited cooling and battery power.
Let's say you add a decent heatspreader/fan and power-supply to these things.. make 'm fly lol.

Such SBC would be at least 2 times more expensive than a 6W Alder-Lake-N SBC and would offer more than 2 times worse user experience under Linux.

Just forget that fucking ARM wet dream. Apple A17 Pro has virtually the same ARM core ported to N3, which means M3 is going to be the same shit, since M series is based on A series core design. Furthermore, all leaks show that upcoming Qualcomm Nuvia cores are garbage. So yeah.

[chewitt]

Does anyone know if Raspberry Pi 5 can decode VP9 and AV1 in hardware?

RPi4 can hardware decode HEVC at 4K with 10-bit HDR support (with the right gstreamer/ffmpeg sources). RPi5 drops H264 hardware decode: which removes the 1080p cap on RPi4 and I've been able to play 4K H264 software decoded (although there's not much real-world media in that format). It does not have VP9 or AV1 hardware support so those are software decoded. In LibreELEC testing with Kodi/YouTube i've been able to play most 4K/30 VP9 media without visible artefacts; 4K60 is a little beyond what the board can handle unless the bitrate is really low (not that far beyond though) .. although I've been using the bare board with no heatsink/cooling so high-CPU and thermal throttling might be a factor at that point. In time once overclocking is better understood it might be in-reach, but no promises

[drakonas777]

USB3 runs at 5Gbps on both sockets

The speed is irrelevant if SBC has a shit power architecture, like RPI4 does, for example. I tried 3 different USB->SATA adapters with 3 different low-power SSDs and RPI4 still triggers low voltage traps even though high qualitu 10A industrial power supply was used. I hope RPI5 is better regarding this.

[Zajec]

No NVME slot? Is this a fucking joke? 😂

There is PCI Express 2.0 interface that you can use for NVME, right?

[Jedibeeftrix]

shame no default M2 slot via that PCIe 2.0 1x connection.

but, would be okay if the MicroSD slot can read cards at the same high speed that the Steamdeck manages...?

[chewitt]

The speed is irrelevant if SBC has a shit power architecture, like RPI4 does, for example.

The power and IO architecture are completely redesigned and different to RPi4 .. but it's not my area of expertise to comment on.

[brent]

not gonna lie, the performance is better than what I was expecting from the next model. but the IO is still so bad it can't be used for any serious purpose, in my view. can we get some power consumption comparisons vs Pi 4, perhaps?

Honest question, what are you missing? I/O is significantly improved on almost all fronts: proper USB ports (not through a hub, four regular host ports), faster SD interface, faster SDIO interface resulting in much faster WiFI, an additional PCIe interface available to the user (even Gen3 capable!), much faster RAM, more versatile CSI/DSI ports, more capable HDMI, etc.

I guess NVMe might have been nice, but that's not a great fit for a credit-card sized board.

The weak point of the PI 5 in my eye is the power situation, 5V @ 5A is pretty special and pricey (many USB-C chargers don't support that and you need cables with e-marker).

[Zajec]

It does not have VP9 or AV1 hardware support so those are software decoded. In LibreELEC testing with Kodi/YouTube i've been able to play most 4K/30 VP9 media without visible artefacts; 4K60 is a little beyond what the board can handle unless the bitrate is really low (not that far beyond though)

Thanks for sharing that!

Hardware VP9 and AV1 decoding would be nice for YouTube. Too bad. I'll see how much software decoding will heat up RPi 5. Hopefully active cooler is going to help a bit.