it's extra funny to me because the Raspberry Pi SoC is basically a little CPU riding on a big GPU (well, the earlier ones were. Maybe the latest ones shift the balance of power a bit). In fact, to this day the GPU is still the one driving the boot sequence.

So plugging a RasPi into a 5090 is "just" swapping the horse for one 10,000x bigger (someone correct my ratio of the RasPi5 GPU to the RTX5090)

i thought my post was already too long to include this, but to your point, you can run AI inference in this setup and the performance can be pretty good.

You're paying a premium for physical compatibility with a ton of niche accessories. Whether or not they make sense depends on how important those accessories are to your use case.

That and the prices never really came back down to earth after the chip shortage hikes.

It would make a lousy desktop computer even if it was 10x as powerful.

- high current 5V USB power supply you probably don't have

- HDMI micro port you have like 1 cable for

- PCIe through very fragile ribbon cable + hodgepodge of adapters

- more adapters needed for SSD

- no case, but needs ample airflow

- power input is on the side and sticks out

GPIO is the killer feature, but I'll be honest, 99% of the hardware hacking I do is with microcontrollers much cheaper than a Pi that provide a serial port over USB anyways (and the commonly-confused-for-a-full-pi Pi Pico is pretty great for this)

For desktop use cases, sure. But the Pi's target market is makers and educators who want small and efficient and can interface easily with peripherals like cameras and GPIO. Desktop users and low-end home labbers are a distant second.

> I think the conclusion here is that Raspberry Pis are now too pricey

This blog post shows a $2000 GPU attached to a slow SBC that costs less than 1/10th of the GPU.

It’s interesting. It’s entertaining. It’s a fun read. But it’s not a serious setup that anyone considers optimal.

I'm pretty sure I completed Morrowind for the first time ever using both wine and a celeron. Likewise before that with VirtualPC (remember that?) on Mac OS (note the space!) and Age of Empires (not even Rise of Rome!).

Single-digit FPS can _absolutely_ be playable if you're a desperate enough ten-year-old...

There's more comparisons with various Arm hardware and Cyberpunk 2077 over here: https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/iss...

The DGX Spark and Mac Studio are currently the two best Arm-based platforms for running that game, it seems to like a lot of CPU to feed a decent GPU.

you're lucky you didn't get stuck with an S3 ViRGE.

FEX is very impressive.

eGPU in his case is just a pcie extension cable and slot, what's there to not work. There's no translation layer, pcie all the way

Denuvo is DRM, not anticheat.

Denuvo is malware, not anticheat.

I tried a similar setup when in college, albeit with a X230 and a 1050Ti, and it worked amazing... for a few minutes at a time, since it blue-screened often.

I never managed to figure out the issue. The BSOD was something about a gpu timeout. It worked perfectly at home but shat the bed at the dorm. I assume there was some nasty interference there.

Maybe BIOS or other firmware? No clue, but my GPU also runs better on Linux that Windows today.

the rockchip hw is really exciting lately, in general. i am using a bunch of them for streaming.

Yes.

Also, it doesn't seem like it would be all that much more expensive for these high end GPUs to start getting x86/64 SoCs with midrange specs baked in, and these AIO GPUs could be tailor made for standalone AI and gaming applications. If it's the equivalent of a $10 bit of gear in terms of cost, they could charge an additional $100 for the feature, with a SoC optimized for the specs of the GPU - get rid of the need for an eGPU altogether and stream from the onboard host?

This is very much a “would you like some coffee with all of your cream?” situation.

Man, I miss that. Every PC build and benchmarking youtuber always went out of their way to keep that meme alive, even as it became increasingly irrelevant. Don't think I've seen anyone mention the phrase in years. :(

:C since you already took "does it run Crysis" I'll take the "does it run Skyrim" one so that Todd Howard can get more ideas.

Best if you need the RAM and are willing to pay, but it doesn't make as much sense as a mini PC for the same purpose (cost-wise), if you're doing normal computing tasks.

I think the sweet spot for the Pi 5 is 4GB (cost vs functionality you can use it for). But if you're like me, you don't care about value quite as much as fun/exploration. And for that, the more RAM, the merrier...

Actually isn’t the cost of a Pi basically a rounding error compared to the 5090 at this point?

One advantage of DXVK in this regard is that it fixes a lot of the native stutter present on the PC version of GTA IV: https://youtu.be/aUIhtXzdeZY?t=218

> What are we supposed to do with this information?

Nothing. It’s just fun.

> t would have been more meaningful if the author tried the GPU card with an old machine, rather than a Raspberry Pi

But then it would have been lame. Who cares? If your old machine is a x86 less than 10 years old it’s most likely faster than the Pi. But that’s not the point. The point is to pair a cheap fun computer with a humongous and expensive card and see if it works. Because it’s fun.

personally I was interested in the capabilities of the pci-e bus as I abuse it in every other computer I can get my hands on (the rpi4 really did not like that treatment).

to your point about 'meaningful' though, indeed the ole College Try to run Crysis on a Samsung NC-10 would be far more glorious! But I assure you this was very fun for me.

Idk you can buy a new Pi for cheap and they're all the same, old machines vary and are not always available. I'm certainly not going to do it but it's not uninteresting imo