r/RetroPie • u/Cool_Composer_4089 • 28d ago

Having trouble deciding which specs to buy

I'm looking to build a retro handheld that runs RetroPie, mainly to play GBA and DS Pokemon games (so nothing demanding, at least for now).

I can't decide whether to buy a Raspberry Pi 4 or 5, and whether to get 2 GB or 4 GB of RAM. I've read CPU is the main bottleneck. So I lean towards the Raspberry Pi 5. I've read the DS itself only had 16 MB of RAM so 4 GB seems excessive, but I also know the OS and emulators will add some overhead (especially if running two instances to trade) and that modern systems can get very bloated for little apparent reason. So I lean towards 4 GB. But the Raspberry Pi 5 with 4 GB of RAM is prohibitively expensive these days.

Will the Raspberry Pi 5 with 2 GB of RAM suffice? I just really don't want to run into any performance issues, and I'd like to future-proof my system for other consoles at least a bit (but what consoles could I emulate with 2 GB?). Any help would be appreciated.

P.S. How easy is it to get RetroPie running on a Pi 5 from a Mac?

3 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

14 comments sorted by

4

u/Cerebral-Knievel-1 28d ago

Pi3 will be more than enough

2

u/manyxcxi 28d ago

During Covid lockdowns I was building these out of Pi 3 compute modules (until the chip shortage) and Pi Zero W and selling them.

Pi 3 would run up to PlayStation just fine, excluding N64, because (at least at the time) the emulators for N64 were VERY CPU heavy and each game was its own little fucked up game of guess the magical settings. Pi 0W ran up to SNES and Sega just fine.

I’d get whatever you can get that fits and doesn’t cost $100.

1

u/snuggly_cobra 27d ago

I run a number of games on a Pi zero 2

2

u/Objective_Ad_4376 28d ago

im using my pi5 1gb and ive managed to run games up to ps2 wii and gc, not all of them run fine but i dont think its because of ram limitations, but i should say that i played the games at native res

for gba and ds i think the pi4 will work just as well, even the pi3 should work

as for the mac i could not say, im on windows/linux, the extend of apps you would need to make it work is smth like putty(to send cmds) and the raspberry pi imager to make ur sd card for the pi

2

u/fat2slow 28d ago

Idk how you would be able to run 2 instances that just seems impossible.

2

u/gillgrissom 28d ago

Might aswell buy a ds xl and mod it, way cheaper than a pi5.

2

u/adrijan84 28d ago

I've been using the 4 since it came out. I have never thought of upgrading it as it's running smoothly still. Keep it cool, use an SSD, don't fiddle with it after you put it together and it will run reliably.

1

u/Cool_Composer_4089 28d ago

Thanks, that's encouraging to hear. How much RAM on your 4?

2

u/adrijan84 28d ago

8Gb, but it's overkill. You can easily use the 2Gb version, or get the 4Gb one to have extra wiggle room, just in case. There are plenty of options on the used market

2

u/yazzer6 28d ago

Also consider the Pi zero 2w or CM4. For software, also look at Recalbox or Batocera. They have some default configurations for handheld screens.

2

u/_G4M3R_ 28d ago

$25 usd phone from Walmart can get the job done https://youtu.be/5ad5BrcfHkY?is=XhidXP3uTstTsLxD

2

u/manyxcxi 28d ago

From Mac or Windows is all the same. Download the RPi image loader (I’m blanking on the name), plug in the SD card, and bake the RetroPie image on to it.

After that, edit the WiFi config text file or plug it into the network, boot it up, and SSH into it.

1

u/artchaos96 24d ago

Pi 4 would be plenty.

May I ask what your plan is for the screen and outer case?