Pi400

[Brian Beuken]

bugger... oh well I got it from a proper supplier, so sending a return request.

[Brian Beuken]

well I'm still waiting for the supplier to respond to my return request, so I tried to fire it up, and burning an SD and plugging in it worked perfectly. But even with a damaged keyboard, I have to say I like this machine, I like it a LOT, its very nippy, the keyboard (the bits that work) is quite usable, no worse than most 80's home systems, or some cheaper laptops, and it's not even close to getting warm when I stress it out.

Overall, this is what I have been hoping to see from Raspberry for years, a plug and play system to appeal to noobs who just want a decent computer that they can flex their brains with.

I really hope it takes off. I see a lot of criticisim of it based on some of the things that are missing, like camera slots etc, but they miss the point, this is a computer for computing, and it does that brilliantly for under 100euros.  My only criticism of it is, why keep the micro HDMI's when you have a redesigned board that you could make space for full size, or gone to 1 slot... its minor though.

Chapeau RP Foundation, this is a triumph

[jomoengineer]

That is a bummer you got a damaged unit. Hopefully they can get you a replacement soon.

Currently, these are only on pre order in the US so I'll have to wait a bit before getting one. I was looking to get another RasPi 4 so this might be a good option.

From what I have see, not having a full size HDMI port seems to be a common complaint, event with the RasPi 4 proper. Perhaps with the RasPi 5 or V2 they will add the full size HDMI.

[Brian Beuken]

hmm still waiting for a reply from reichelt elektronik who are simply not responding to emails. I have tried harrassing them a bit on their facebook, companies don't like bad press, and sure enough in under an hour I get a response... to contact them by phone. A nice idea but I need to send proof of the damage, which of course I did in the email.


grrrr.. It will be worth it, but this kind of stuff is annoying.

[jomoengineer]

Good old Facebook. I don't use it much anymore, but seems like it still has some uses.

Perhaps you will get a replacement by the time it is available in the US.

[Brian Beuken]

finally got a return slip today, no comments just the return slip, but its a start I suppse..

They are still sold out so not holding out hope for a fast return.

[Brian Beuken]

refund being processed... I'll pick up another one in the new year when stocks settle down

[jomoengineer]

Nice! That is cool they refunding the unit.

It will be interesting to see the demos on it once you have a working Pi400.

[Brian Beuken]

The P400 does not have a faster GPU though, then clock increase is limited to the CPU, so none of the main demos I am working on right now are going to be any better or worse than a standard Pi4.. Its going to take something with more CPU based needs to really get the P400 showing off what it can do.

Though if the overlcocks on the pi400 turn out to be stable, and it did seem to be ok when I ran them on the broken one.Then indeed its performance goes up quite a bit.
I had the CPU at 2200 and GPU up to 750 which was extreme, I think its 400ghz normally? It had no issues running any high end GPU demo's at all, suggesting it can comfortably cope. But I didn't have the system long enough to keep it at those rates, and generally I don't reccomend overlcocking to gain performance. Better coding is a safe solution
But it certainly suggests the Pi400 is going to be a pretty amazing machine to squeeze power out of.

Is there anyway to change the clock speed in a running program?

[Brian Beuken]

I finally got a new one, after waiting ages for one supplier to have stock, I gave up when I discovered another has stock.

And I have it up and running though I am a bit confused in some differences in running speed. My 4x game project ran on it fine after setting up the libs and so on, but it clocked in at 45-49 fps..... which is very odd as the Pi4 runing the same code clocked  a steady 60fps.

hmmm I need to get both machines running side by side to do a compare, I only have 1 usb c adapter so have to swap. But that is quite unexpected given the 400 has a higher clock speed. I'll review later, right now I am rather busy with my project on the Pi4 trying to get as much done as I can to show students when they start on their version of the same project this coming monday

It is looking nice, but at the moment its a collection of things and ideas, with no real gameplay in place... hoping I can get that in this weekend.
www.patreon.com/brianbeuken