There's a new Raspberry Pi 5 in town: a 2GB variant that brings the price of the microcomputer down to $50. Less RAM doesn't necessarily mean it's less capable, but it just won't be up to par for some RAM-intensive tasks. Raspberry Pi Foundation Executive Director Eben Upton says The device is “functionally identical to its predecessor.”
When the Raspberry Pi 5 launched last year, it only came in a 4GB variant for $60 and an 8GB version for $80, making them both $5 more expensive than the corresponding Raspberry Pi 4 models. While the 2GB version may not be ideal for doing things like running ai applications or using it as a full-fledged media center, Upton says many customers will likely find that it “works perfectly fine” for less demanding use cases.
The Raspberry Pi 5 is the most powerful of the Raspberry Pi Foundation and has its own RP1 I/O Controlleralong with a quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 processor running at 2.4GHz. To create the 2GB model, the Raspberry Pi Foundation built a cost-optimized version of its processor that strips out any unnecessary functionality. The result is a cheaper chip with the same features, including a PCI Express 2.0 interface.
