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[Post] The Raspberry Pi 4 is Better?

When I started this blog, the first post was a post criticising the Raspberry Pi 3B+ for being not "up to par" as compared to its competitors in the market. You can read that post here.

Ever since then a few developments have taken place, and the Raspberry Pi 4B has been announced, and subsequently released, much to the joy of makers.

The hype lived up to its name though -- a more efficient CPU, faster RAM, true Gigabit Ethernet and more. The RPi 4B is now a serious competitor to the market. But is it worth the money?

Well, I bought one (4GB version) :P

Before we proceed any further, I thought we compare some of the differences between the RPi 3B+ and the RPi 4B:-

Spec RPi 3B+ RPi 4B
CPU Quad core A53 @ 1.5 GHz Quad core A72 @ 1.5 GHz
RAM 1GB LPDDR2 @800MHz 1/2/4GB LPDDR4 @ 2400MHz
GPU VideoCore IV @ 300MHz VideoCore VI @ 500MHz
USB
ports		 4 x USB 2.0 over 1 USB 2.0 connection from SoC 2 x USB 2.0 direct to SoC + 2 x USB 3.0 over PCIe x1
Ethernet Gigabit Ethernet @ 300Mbps, shared bandwidth with USB ports Gigabit Ethernet @ 1Gbps, shared bandwidth with PCIe x1
Wireless 802.11 b/g/n/ac, BLE 4.2 802.11 b/g/n/ac, BLE 5.0
Display 1 x full-sized HDMI 1.3a port, MIPI DSI, TRRS jack 2 x Micro HDMI 2.0 ports, MIPI DSI, TRRS jack
Power In Micro USB Type-B USB Type-C
Storage microSD microSD

With the RPi 4B, it has answered most of my complaints, except for the onboard storage, which at this point is not a big deal.

I loaded a microSD card with the Raspbian Buster Lite image and booted it up. Even the boot process feels WAY faster than before and I'd say that's a huge improvement. This could be due to the more efficient A72 cores and the faster RAM frequencies.

The GUI is butter smooth as well considering that the GPU also got an upgrade and a higher clock speed.

The tragic thing about the RPi 4 is that the USB 3.0 ports and the Ethernet are all running off a single PCIe lane, which bottlenecks the USB 3.0 speed. That's a bummer, but honestly I won't complain much given the upgrade over the previous USB 2.0 ports.

To put into perspective:-
  • PCIe x1 has a throughput of 500MB/s, but in any one direction the throughput is only 250MB/s, thus transferring at any speeds faster than 250MB/s will be bottlenecked
  • USB 2.0 has a throughput of 60MB/s
  • USB 3.0 has a throughput of 625MB/s
  • Gigabit Ethernet has a throughput of 125MB/s
The Ethernet port will not be bottlenecked by the PCIe x1, but the USB 3.0 ports will be. To top it off, since both are sharing the same bandwidth, to be able to use the full potential of 2 x USB 3.0 and 1 x Gigabit Ethernet will require

(2 x 625MB/s) + 125MB/s = 1375MB/s

Or a PCIe x8 (throughput = 2000MB/s in each direction) connection. Then again, unless we are connecting the USB 3.0 to a SATA SSD, the 250MB/s in the RPi 4B should definitely be sufficient (SanDisk Ultra Flair has a throughput of 150MB/s only).

All in all, I am very satisfied with the RPi 4B and the changes made to it, and also want to commend the Raspberry Pi Foundation that they are able to still produce the 1GB version at the same low price of US$35.

Maybe in the near future they will be able to remove some parts like the TRRS jack and one of the micro HDMI ports, and maybe, just maybe, they will be abe to squeeze an eMMC onto the board.

That's all for this post. Subscribe to be notified when I post new stuff (DIY laptop and tablet plans coming up soon).

Thanks for reading. You're awesome.
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