The Raspberry Pi 5 has finally been unveiled alongside major upgrades

The Raspberry Pi 5 is scheduled to launch in October

The Raspberry Pi 5 marks the company’s first big release in four years, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t been busy. Between the Pi 4 and Pi 5, the CM4 (industry-oriented embedded solution), Pi 400 (Pi 4 embedded in the keyboard), Pi Zero 2, and Pico devices were also launched.

The Pi 5 will offer the company’s silicon as a system-on-chip (SoC). The SoC is capable of doing much more than the Raspberry Pi 4, with claims that it is 2-3 times more powerful than its predecessor.

The Pi 5 introduces new M.2 and POE+ HAT modules

The majority of the hardware on the board will be familiar to those who have used the Pi 4. However, the SoC is now capable of running PCIe 2.0, for faster hardware. There are still dual 4K micro-HDMI inputs and USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports.

There is always a 40-pin GPIO, which are general purpose I/O pins for tinkerers. These can produce up to 5V of power for various HAT plugins and other tools you may want to implement in a project.

Speaking of HAT modules, Raspberry Pi will be launching an updated Power Over Ethernet+ (POE+) HAT. This will be placed on top of the Pi 5 and although it’s incomplete, it actually looks sleeker than the original.

With the addition of PCIe 2.0, it opens up more that can be done with external devices. A pair of new M.2 SSD caps will be released. One will be a traditional barebones chassis, but support full-sized M.2 drives, while the other will be smaller to fit inside the case. This will support sizes 2230 and 2242 – similar to those used in the Steam Deck.

However, those using the Pi for camera-based applications will need to purchase a new cable. The company changed the pins on the camera connectors to have higher density. Raspberry Pi will sell the new connectors starting at $1. All current camera modules made by Raspberry Pi will come with the necessary connectors.

The clock is in real time

Fortunately, the Raspberry Pi 5 will come with a real-time clock. Number 4 caused us some headaches when we were originally working on it, as some projects required a real-time clock. This is different from the internal software clock, and integrating it on board the Pi 5 will make things a lot easier.

The Raspberry Pi 5 should improve the simulation

For emulation fans, the Raspberry Pi 5 seems to be the next big thing to wait for. The Pi 4 was made to be a great machine to play retro games on, but it had strict limits on what it could run. Anything beyond Dreamcast on home consoles, and PSP – in some games – for handheld devices.

The additional GPU power from the new SoC should allow for a huge jump in performance, and hopefully provide support for the sixth generation of consoles.

The new VideoCore VII GPU will also be supported by a new 4K60 HEVC decoder. With this software in place, the Raspberry Pi 5 should make an excellent low-cost Plex or multimedia server.