The Raspberry Pi 5 has recently stepped up the game in the world of single-board computers by bringing more to the table than just retro gaming capabilities. Thanks to ingenious tech enthusiast Jeff Geerling, the Pi 5 has demonstrated a surprising potential when coupled with a powerful discrete GPU like the AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT. This combination unlocks the ability to handle modern AAA games in glorious 4K resolution.
Outfitted with the Broadcom BCM2712 SoC, the Raspberry Pi 5 sports a quad-core ARM CPU paired with a VideoCore VII GPU. On its own, these specs make it perfect for reliving nostalgic gaming experiences, but don’t quite enable it to tackle today’s graphically demanding titles without a hefty boost. Enter the Radeon RX 6700 XT. Geerling showcased how this capable GPU can bring the muster needed, allowing the Pi to run 2020’s Doom Eternal at 4K. While the frame rates showed some fluctuation at this high resolution, scaling down to 1080p resulted in a consistent performance above 30 FPS, highlighting the GPU’s capability and the CPU’s limitations — the latter being the bottleneck with its current power.
Not all is lost though, as the Raspberry Pi 5 comfortably handles older classics like Doom 3 and SuperTuxKart at 4K and a smooth 60 FPS, thanks to the recent support updates for RX 6000 and RX 7000 GPU drivers. Beyond the gaming landscape, these updated drivers also bring enhanced hardware video transcoding capabilities. However, it’s worth noting the absence of LLM acceleration support thus far, and Geerling sheds light on the unlikeliness of AMD ROCm arriving on ARM systems in the near future.
Ever the experimenter, Geerling extended the setup’s reach by testing additional popular titles such as Forza Horizon 4, Crysis Remastered, and Red Dead Redemption 2. He even went a step further by incorporating the Radeon Pro W7700 into the mix, delving deeper into the possibilities this intriguing integration offers.
If you’re a tech enthusiast or a Raspberry Pi aficionado, the newfound flexibility of the Raspberry Pi 5 paired with a powerful GPU might just open doors to a budget-friendly, high-performance gaming rig capable of tackling both yesteryear’s classics and today’s visual masterpieces.
