What games can I play on it this way?
Whenever you say you want more powerful the answer is the current way it's primary goal is to be affordable and its primary target audience are schools etc.
E.g. The standard version of the Pi 400 with 4 GB covers most (consumer / school children / students) application purposes. 8 GB are rather needed in the area of video editing / prosumer / server, and would bring the price significantly above the „magic“ 100 € limit.[1]
The vendor just doesn't want to acknowledge the real role of Raspberry Pi is not limited to being a cheap tinkerer board anymore, it has became a standard (for an ARM PC and a hackable set-top-box/console in particular) and a vibrant ecosystem has grown around it - there are plenty reasons to still want a Raspberry Pi original (rather than something the competitors offer) when you don't need it to be so cheap (or even so small) but actually need more power, faster IO, more ports, more GPIO pins etc.
[1] https://pi3g.com/2020/11/04/will-the-raspberry-pi-400-be-ava...
The vendor is a charity with a mission that they have chosen [1]. They can target the Pi however they want to meet that mission. The fact that it doesn't happen to do something that you want it for is your problem not theirs.
There has been a virtuous cycle that something originally aimed at education has been of use to so many hackers, resulting in high volumes and all the benefits that brings. But that doesn't mean that they also need to focus on other sectors.
> The vendor is a charity with a mission that they have chosen. They can target the Pi however they want to meet that mission.
I don't say they can't, I say that doesn't really reflect the actual reality. Many people buy it just because it's THE thing and a somewhat uniform standard so it's easier to target and to benefit from the existing ecosystem around it.
This also is a real role among those Raspbery PI plays in the real world. This is a fact the vendor marketing seemingly ignores - such is the meaning of my statement.
I don't judge them or demand anything.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi_Foundation
They are not doing this for profit, although they are self-financing at this point (from what I've read).
I'd give some minor portion of my anatomy to be part of something like the Raspberry Pi project and make some sort of difference (even if it might be seen as pandering to geeky tinkerers rather than helping schoolchildren, it's still one of the most fun and rewarding things I can envision as an engineer).
Compared to that, what would make you go for a Pi at that price point?
Has a quad core AMD APU, 2x DDR4 DIM sockets, PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, one M key M.2 slot, 2x SATA, 2x USB 3.1 Gen 1.
Board itself with integrated CPU costs just ~20% more than the Raspberry Pi 4 8GB, at least here in Norway. Add in 8GB of value memory and a small/spare PSU and you should be not far off the 2x mark.
[1]: http://www.biostar-usa.com/app/en-us/mb/introduction.php?S_I...
> The vendor just doesn't want to acknowledge the real role of Raspberry Pi is not limited to being a cheap tinkerer board anymore
To me, tinkering means GPIO.
That's why I was asking why the want for a Raspberry Pi, why not get something else that already exist. I'm curious what they're looking for. Of course if they still want GPIO then that's a valid point.
being not limited to being a cheap tinkerer board doesn't mean not being a [slightly less cheap] tinkerer board among the rest of roles. I didn't mean I don't need GPIO. I actually want more GPIO so I could connect a "hat", an infrared port, a cooler and still have spare pins for actual tinkering.
Another cool thing available exclusively with Raspberry Pi is polished Raspbian OS coming with free Mathematica and other goodies.
Hardware codecs also feels nice and, AFAIK, you don't get them with x86.
At last but not at least (this arguably is the most valuable part actually) it is THE SBC. This means it's easy and efficient to target for a developer (incl hardware developers) and easy and efficient to share problems and solutions for the community.
> At last but not at least (this arguably is the most valuable part actually) it is THE SBC.
I'm not sure a significantly more expensive, but more powerful, Raspberry Pi would have the same market appeal. Then again, what do I know :)
USB 3.1 Gen 1 means simple USB 3.0, right?
Its a bit more than 2x the price, but the flexibility and standard boot and peripherals it offers is worth the cost for hobbiest hacks.
It isn't as sexy or prone to looking cool, but technically it is possible. I'm actually planning on trying to tinker a traditionally networked cluster that I?m going to evolve to an attempt at an SSI'd cluster.
That's really all what most Integrated Circuits are going to mowadays. Just take a few ALU's, clock circuits, register files, Memory, some caches, a few MMU's, connect it all with buses, fab x gang bustahs and you've got a new system. The toughest part seems to be getting someone to be frank with you and just giving you an accurate datasheet/not screwing you with locked down firmware and rent extractiom arramgements.
oh wait just buy a khadas vim3 or the new tinkerboard etc etc