Wait. 4K@30 or 4K@60 for the HDMI? Pinch me, I must be dreaming.

I'm not entirely sure about the pricing though...
The previous Pi was interesting because it was super-cheap.
But now if you would take the 4GB model, add a case, a power supply, SD card etc, to make it into a complete 'PC', you're getting extremely close to the 'Mini PCs' from China, price-wise, such as the Wintel Pro or Z83/Z85, which are powered by an Intel x64 SoC.
And you can get those for about $100, including a Windows 10 installation.

It's $35 for the 1GB mode, $45 for 2GB, and for the 4GB model, it's $55.

The Pi was always 35USD. Older models or the A model would be cheaper and the Zero would be 5GBP or 10GBP for WiFi. If you have to add case, PSU, keyboard, mouse and screen you would always end up with much more. So nothing has changed much. It is still a pretty good price since it is very versatile and has a thriving ecosystem that lets you do all kinds of things. And remember: the Pi was and is meant for learning. It doesn't need to have the best bang for the buck. It merely needs to be good enough and have good support. And you can still start out with very small money, if that's an issue.

root42 wrote:

It doesn't need to have the best bang for the buck.

Well, it does, for my usage.
That is, we are currently using x86-based PCs for digital signage and such.
Raspberry Pis are interesting when the CPU/GPU is powerful enough, and the cost is lower, which is why I looked into 3B+ some time ago.
The 4 is interesting for our usage because of the dual HDMI and 4k capabilities. But that more or less depends on the price difference. The price advantage is not as big as it was with the 3B+, which means it's a more difficult sell.

There is only one thing that matters.. Can it decode x265 in hardware? Otherwise it's worthless to me.

EDIT: YES, it has H265 hardware decoding; I'll eventually get one to replace my media player setup.

Crank9000 wrote:

BushLin wrote:

I love the pi, the concept and obliquity make many things possible or accessible. However, I feel sorry for all the people who […]
Show full quote

I love the pi, the concept and obliquity make many things possible or accessible.
However, I feel sorry for all the people who went all out on accessories to run emulators on their HDTV; they can't understand why their favourite games from the 80’s and 90's are not as they remember.
Just the ~50ms lag from a "good" TV is enough to make something like Tyson's Punch Out impossible without adding the total of around 100ms from emulation on a pi 3.
Hopefully it'll be better on the pi 4 but I doubt that all the sources of lag will be solved any time soon.

When I played around with Pi 3 and retropie I first had absolutely horrible lag, but disabling v-sync fixed it. I'm not super sensitive to input lag when using a controller and I have no idea how laggy the old hd ready tv I was using for it was (ten years old, doesn't have game mode to reduce lag), but after disabling v-sync the lag certainly wasn't anywhere near ~150ms. Even I would have noticed it if it was that high even with a controller.

Pretty sure it was around 100ms at the most on my tv. Though I'm sure that's not great when compared to a CRT and original hw.

Are you sure you would notice?
https://forums.libretro.com/t/an-input-lag-in … estigation/4407

Well, the most direct system possible is the Atari VCS/2600.
It has no framebuffer, so it has to 'race the beam'. That means that your sprites are rendered directly onto the screen, not into a backbuffer, and then flipped a frame later. So input handling and drawing is done on the same frame. With a CRT you basically see your input 'immediately'. There is virtually no lag, it is <= 1 frame.

Any emulator will at least need 1 frame of lag, because it needs to emulate the video circuitry into a buffer, and then present the results.

Scali wrote:

I'm not entirely sure about the pricing though...
The previous Pi was interesting because it was super-cheap.
But now if you would take the 4GB model, add a case, a power supply, SD card etc, to make it into a complete 'PC', you're getting extremely close to the 'Mini PCs' from China, price-wise.

I don't know, why you're still operating with 4GB RAM model and ignoring lower SKUs. And also, that price bundle thing also applied for 3B+, 3B and all regular sized RPis before.

Scali wrote:

Raspberry Pis are interesting when the CPU/GPU is powerful enough, and the cost is lower, which is why I looked into 3B+ some time ago.
The 4 is interesting for our usage because of the dual HDMI and 4k capabilities. But that more or less depends on the price difference. The price advantage is not as big as it was with the 3B+, which means it's a more difficult sell.

I don't get it. New RPi4 with 1GB RAM is having faster CPU/GPU, dual display output, 1GbE, USB 3.0 and it's still cost same $35. How is it less valuable and more difficult to sell?

Srandista wrote:

I don't know, why you're still operating with 4GB RAM model and ignoring lower SKUs. And also, that price bundle thing also applied for 3B+, 3B and all regular sized RPis before.

1 GB is not enough. 2 GB might scrape by, might not. 4 GB is the best choice for us.

Srandista wrote:

I don't get it. New RPi4 with 1GB RAM is having faster CPU/GPU, dual display output, 1GbE, USB 3.0 and it's still cost same $35. How is it less valuable and more difficult to sell?

It's not the same price.
The 1 GB model is 39.95 euros locally.
At the same shop, the 3B+ is 37.95.
And that's gone up. When I bought mine a few months ago, it was 30 euros.
Sure, the Pi 4 is better value for money, but if customers just want to pay less, it's a difficult sell.

BushLin wrote:

Crank9000 wrote:

BushLin wrote:

I love the pi, the concept and obliquity make many things possible or accessible. However, I feel sorry for all the people who […]
Show full quote

I love the pi, the concept and obliquity make many things possible or accessible.
However, I feel sorry for all the people who went all out on accessories to run emulators on their HDTV; they can't understand why their favourite games from the 80’s and 90's are not as they remember.
Just the ~50ms lag from a "good" TV is enough to make something like Tyson's Punch Out impossible without adding the total of around 100ms from emulation on a pi 3.
Hopefully it'll be better on the pi 4 but I doubt that all the sources of lag will be solved any time soon.

When I played around with Pi 3 and retropie I first had absolutely horrible lag, but disabling v-sync fixed it. I'm not super sensitive to input lag when using a controller and I have no idea how laggy the old hd ready tv I was using for it was (ten years old, doesn't have game mode to reduce lag), but after disabling v-sync the lag certainly wasn't anywhere near ~150ms. Even I would have noticed it if it was that high even with a controller.

Pretty sure it was around 100ms at the most on my tv. Though I'm sure that's not great when compared to a CRT and original hw.

Are you sure you would notice?
https://forums.libretro.com/t/an-input-lag-in … estigation/4407

No 🤣

So the emulation really does have ~100ms lag by itself + TV + wireless controller if you use one. No wonder I've always sucked at 8/16bit games that require fast and precise controls, I have the senses of a granny with a controller!

Scali wrote:

Well, it does, for my usage. That is, we are currently using x86-based PCs for digital signage and such. Raspberry Pis are inter […]
Show full quote

root42 wrote:

It doesn't need to have the best bang for the buck.

Well, it does, for my usage.
That is, we are currently using x86-based PCs for digital signage and such.
Raspberry Pis are interesting when the CPU/GPU is powerful enough, and the cost is lower, which is why I looked into 3B+ some time ago.
The 4 is interesting for our usage because of the dual HDMI and 4k capabilities. But that more or less depends on the price difference. The price advantage is not as big as it was with the 3B+, which means it's a more difficult sell.

The price is exactly the same as the 3B+ if your application is viable with a 1gb pool of RAM.

gdjacobs wrote:

The price is exactly the same as the 3B+ if your application is viable with a 1gb pool of RAM.

It's not, as I said. The Pi 4 is 2 euros more.
Not a big deal no, but the same it is not.

Scali wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

The price is exactly the same as the 3B+ if your application is viable with a 1gb pool of RAM.

It's not, as I said. The Pi 4 is 2 euros more.
Not a big deal no, but the same it is not.

The pi 3 only ever came with a maximum of 1gb. You were never in the market for the 3B+ in the first place 😕 . It is an odd complaint, given that the base Pi 4 is faster in every way to the pi 3 and costs the same.

I don't know of any single board computer or mini PC with 4gb of RAM for 55$

mothergoose729 wrote:

I don't know of any single board computer or mini PC with 4gb of RAM for 55$

There's plenty to choose from, such as:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33044650669.h … sAbTest=ae803_4

kind of curious to see how the windows 10 compatibility projects will evolve, if they had OpenGL working it would be kind of fun,

https://www.inpact-hardware.com/article/1124/ … -microsd-et-usb
this person tested CPUmark99 on windows 10 (x86 on arm emulation) on the pi3 and it scored 45 points on CPUmark99, I think this is like a p3 500 or something
the 4 should be way faster.

but realistically because of shipping costs and tariffs it becomes very expensive for me to import a raspberry pi, the stuff from aliexpress ends up a lot cheaper.

Speaking of Windows, I tried Windows IoT on the Pi3B+, but performance was dramatic, and Direct3D was only available in software mode.

If you wanted Windows 10 (*shudder) on a tiny device you're not paying much more for an Intel Compute Stick after factoring in license and accessory costs; performance won't suck as much either.

Scali wrote:

It's not the same price. The 1 GB model is 39.95 euros locally. At the same shop, the 3B+ is 37.95. And that's gone up. When I b […]
Show full quote

It's not the same price.
The 1 GB model is 39.95 euros locally.
At the same shop, the 3B+ is 37.95.
And that's gone up. When I bought mine a few months ago, it was 30 euros.
Sure, the Pi 4 is better value for money, but if customers just want to pay less, it's a difficult sell.

I think you're just the victim of your locale again. If I pop over to adafruit.com, it's $35 for the 3 B+, and $35 for the 4. Same price, better hardware. Really hard to find something to complain about there.

Neither SparkFun nor DigiKey currently have the 4, but SparkFun is selling the 3 B+ for $39.95, and DigiKey wanted considerably more for it. Maybe you just need to shop around more, since pricing seems to vary quite a bit. For me, any difference is likely to be dwarfed in how much I have to pay for shipping, and what else I'm buying from some place at the time. Either way, I could buy four of them for the price I paid for 4MB of RAM back in the 90s, so $35, $40, $50.. whatever is fine by me.

BushLin wrote:

If you wanted Windows 10 (*shudder) on a tiny device you're not paying much more for an Intel Compute Stick after factoring in license and accessory costs; performance won't suck as much either.

that's fine but there is a huge amount more flexibility with the Pi.
4GB ram is a huge boost for any sort of desktop usage for the Pi, be it trying windows or more importantly on linux
also being able to use a USB 3.0 drive with fast speeds is again a huge boost for that.