![]() So I was shocked to see how many applications and tabs I could have open in Raspberry Pi OS (32-bit) without surpassing 4GB. If you use a PC or Mac, even 8GB of RAM is usually too little in fact, if you’re buying a desktop, we think 32GB is ideal. (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) How Much Raspberry Pi RAM Can You Really Use? See the picture below for a comparison of the 8GB to the non-8GB boards.Ī face-shaped set of chips near the USB-C port distinguishes the 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 from other models. On other capacities, the power supply is near the USB 2.0 ports, but doesn't sit in a face shape. In order to provide more power for the RAM, the Raspberry Pi 4 (8GB) has a switch-mode power supply - a constellation of three small black chips that's shaped like eyes and a mouth - that sits just to the left of the USB-C connector. However, the 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 has a tell-tale physical sign that lets you know that you have the 8GB capacity. If you've got several Raspberry Pi 4 B boards in your office and you reach for one, it's difficult to tell how much RAM the model has, just by looking at the PCB. How to Tell a Raspberry Pi 4 (8GB) From Other Models It’s not too difficult to install Ubuntu on a Raspberry Pi, but in my experience using it on a 4GB Raspberry Pi 4 B, it could be kind of sluggish. I didn’t test them on the 8GB model, but it’s worth mentioning that both Ubuntu and Gentoo already have 64-bit operating systems that are compatible with the Raspberry Pi. For example, the 64-bit OS now uses KMS (Kernel Mode Switching) for display management, which Upton says could result in problems during beta, but will ultimately lead to a more efficient OS. However, it’s important to note that this early beta build is just a starting point and most of the changes we’ll see are under the hood. You'll then need to use Raspberry Pi Imager or Etcher to burn the img to a microSD card. If you want to try the new 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS beta, check out Pi CEO Eben Upton's forum post, which contains a direct link to download the latest img file for it. I was able to use more than 4GB of RAM in both operating systems, with a series of nearly 60 tabs with many actively playing 4K video (along with video editor OneShot) taking me over the 4GB threshold. Strangely, there’s slightly less available RAM in the 64-bit OS than in 32-bit, with 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS showing 7.8GB available while the 64-bit version has 7.6GB available. All the preloaded apps are 32-bit, so they don’t really take advantage of the 64-bit capability. ![]() So far, I didn’t find a single thing you could do with the 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS that you can’t do with regular 32-bit Raspberry Pi OS (aka Raspbian). ![]() The familiar Raspberry Pi logo sits on the start menu, the fonts and colors are the same, the Raspberry Pi Configuration app is the same and even the default desktop wallpaper is the same at this point. There’s however one issue with using the 64-bit version of Chromium installed by default: the WidevineCDM library is not available making it impossible to play streaming video from premium services such as Netflix or Disney+.Raspberry Pi 4 B (8GB) running 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS (Image credit: Tom's Hardware)Īs part of my testing, I got early access to Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit), which looks and feels just like its 32-bit counterpart has for a long time. But with the first stable release, video acceleration works through Chromium and VLC, GPU acceleration works through Mesa, and hopefully, some of the performance regressions are resolved, so it can perform more or less as well, or in some cases better, than the 32-bit version. When I tested Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit on Raspberry Pi 4 in June 2020 I actually noted some performance regressions against Raspberry Pi 32-bit OS, and at the time there were some known issues such as the lack of hardware video decoding in VLC and Chromium. Some of the main reasons to finally release a 64-bit version include improved software compatibility with many closed-source applications only available for arm64, and some open-source ones not fully optimized for the armhf port, some performance benefits, and the ability for a process to make use of the full 8GB RAM, removing the 3GB limit when using LPAE (Large Physical Address Extension) on 32-bit operating systems. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has now officially released Raspberry Pi OS 64-bit about two years after the first beta version was released.ĭespite some potential performance benefits from using 64-bit code instead of 32-bit, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has resisted moving too quickly to a 64-bit OS because if it would create two separate worlds for their earlier 32-bit boards like Raspberry Pi 2 or Raspberry Pi Zero, and the newer 64-bit boards starting with Raspberry Pi 3 onwards and may confuse users besides the extra workloads. ![]()
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