The New Raspberry Pi 5 will be shipping with a 2.5X Faster CPU, PCIe, and more

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has just unveiled its latest and greatest creation the Raspberry Pi 5. With a 2.5X more powerful CPU, PCIe Support, GbE Ethernet, and a custom RP1 South Bridge. The Pi5 will cost you $60 for the 4GB version and $80 for the 8GB version. With all this power and performance this is unarguably the fastest Raspberry Pi that ever existed!

The new Pi is built around the Broadcom BCM2712 – quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 CPU that hosts 512KB per-core L2 caches; 2MB shared L3 cache; an 800MHz VideoCore VII GPU and cryptography extensions, Additionally, it supports OpenGL ES 3.1, Vulkan 1.2.

Feature	Raspberry Pi 4	Raspberry Pi 5
CPU	Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core Cortex-A72 at 1.5GHz	Broadcom BCM2712 quad-core Cortex-A76 at 2.4GHz
GPU	VideoCore VI at 600MHz	VideoCore VII at 800MHz
RAM	LPDDR4-3200 SDRAM (1GB, 2GB, 4GB, 8GB)	LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM (4GB, 8GB)
Storage	MicroSD card slot	MicroSD card slot
Networking	Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), Bluetooth 5.0	Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax), Bluetooth 5.2
Display outputs	2x micro-HDMI	2x micro-HDMI
Display Outputs	2x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0	5GbE 2x USB 3.0, 2x USB 2.0
Other ports	1x 3.5mm AV jack, 1x GPIO header, 1x camera port, 1x display port	UART Header 1x GPIO header, 1x camera port, 2x display ports, 1x PCIe 2.0 x1 port
Power	5V DC via USB-C	5V DC via USB-C
Form Factor	85.6mm x 56.5mm	85.6mm x 56.5mm

Taking a good look at the Pi5 Specs, I was most interested in the Power Management IC(PMIC). It’s a Dialog DA9091 chip that not only supports USB-C PD but also supports RTC and power monitoring. That means with a simple command like

vcgencmd pmic_read_adc

You can easily read the current data by the system, and trust me, that will solve many power-related issues in your project.

There is also a separate UART header for the PI, which means no tinkering with the config file to get UART debug up and running.

Now we will look at the special FPC header named PCIe. Yes! PCIe on Raspberry pi is now finally here. Now you can connect your trusty old RTX GPU with a raspberry pi.

One of the cool things I like is the memory resistor. It could be a better feature that most people are paying attention to, but it clearly shows which variant of Raspberry Pi you are using. Now think about it: finding a 2G, 4G, or 8G Raspberry Pi from a pile will be much easier.

The next feature is the long-awaited power button and a dual-purpose Status LED, which sits beside the power button in the pi5. The new Raspberry Pi case also features an external power button and a status-led indicator.

Now, you don’t have to hack the case for a custom power button.

Speaking of the case, the new Raspberry Pi case has better airflow and a much better design than the last generation. To take a step further, Raspberry Pi Foundation is making another active cooler that will snap into the built-in fan header.

The RPi5 has a trusty old SD card slot that now supports UHS-I, which means the transfer speed doubles that of the previous gen RPi4.

After a close look at the backside of the Pi, you will observe that there are no more through-hole components on the backside of the board, which makes production time much faster.

Specifications listed for the Raspberry Pi 5 include:

Memory: Options of 4GB/8GB LPDDRx-4267 SDRAM.
Storage: MicroSD slot.
Display: Dual 4Kp60 micro-HDMI with HDR and HEVC decoding.
Camera: Supports two 4-lane MIPI ports.
Expansion: PCIe 2.0 slot.
Connectivity: Dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi; Gigabit Ethernet (PoE optional).
I/O: 40-pin header.
USB: Two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0 ports.
Extras: RTC, fan connector, power button.
Power: 5V/5A DC with PD.
Size: 85 x 56 mm.

The Raspberry Pi can be preordered from multiple distributors such as Pimoroni, Farnell, SeedStudio, Kitronik, ThePiHut, etc. The RPi 5 with 4GB RAM is priced at ~$60.00 while the 8GB model costs ~$80.00. The estimated available date is around the end of October. For more information, refer to the product announcement.