While people have discovered some great uses for the Raspberry Pi 5, its small form factor means it hasn’t been amazing at graphically based tasks. However, this hasn’t stopped the Raspberry Pi community from finding a workaround. Now, an avid Raspberry Pi 5 user has found a way to implement a graphics card Raspberry Pi 5, and early tests are promising.
Adding power to the Raspberry Pi 5
The discovery was made by Jeff Geerling on YouTube, who posted a video using an AMD Radeon RX 460 on a Raspberry Pi 5. The implementation is not perfect: it requires a ton of setup, the GPU’s fans don’t turn on, and throughout the demonstration, Jeff couldn’t see his mouse cursor. However, the video does show that the Raspberry Pi 5 can use a graphics card.
To prove it, Jeff fires up the GLMark2 benchmarking software on the Raspberry Pi 5. The benchmarking software could identify the graphic’s card installation and use it to render 3D shapes on the screen. And while he admits that the graphics card was released in 2016, he does show that it renders graphics faster than the Raspberry Pi 5’s onboard hardware.
Wiring up the AMD Radeon RX 460 took a lot of work, and Jeff had to use additional parts from Pineberry Pi to get it working. However, he hopes Pineberry Pi takes note of his achievement and releases a product that allows people to easily use an external GPU with their Raspberry Pi. And, of course, he’s excited to see if he can get more recent graphics cards up and running.
Given how limited the rest of the hardware is, you won’t see a Raspberry Pi 5 rendering the latest and greatest games anytime soon. But Jeff seemed more interested in getting the Raspberry Pi 5 to a miniature desktop PC level than turning it into a gaming rig. Even so, an AMD Radeon RX 460 can handle Minecraft just fine, so perhaps it can become a casual gaming device for the extremely budget-minded player.
It’s still unclear if we’ll ever see Raspberry Pi 5s decked out with the best GPUs of 2023. But as of now, this may be the first step toward bringing stronger graphics processors into the realm of the Raspberry Pi 5.