Raspberry Pi Drag Race: Pi 1 to Pi 5 – Performance Comparison

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 8:57 PM UTC

moffkalast wrote: post #22

verginer wrote: post #12

I finally found a job for my Raspberry Pi 1 Model B from 2012. It’s been sitting in a drawer for years, but about a 2 years ago added it to my Tailscale network as an exit node. It’s a single-core 700MHz ARMv6 chip with 512MB of RAM. It's a fossil—a Pi 5 is 600x faster (according to the video). But for the 'low-bandwidth' task of routing some banking traffic or running a few changedetection watches via a Hetzner VPS…

Well on the other hand, at which point does it become wasteful to run something when it gets less and less power efficient compared to newer devices? According to OP's benchmarks, the Pi 1 burns 2W constant to do essentially zero work and running that on a more modern device that's already running would use almost no extra power. Then again we use a kW or two to microwave things for minutes on a daily basis so who re…

Post by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 9:22 PM UTC

moffkalast wrote: post #22

verginer wrote: post #12

I finally found a job for my Raspberry Pi 1 Model B from 2012. It’s been sitting in a drawer for years, but about a 2 years ago added it to my Tailscale network as an exit node. It’s a single-core 700MHz ARMv6 chip with 512MB of RAM. It's a fossil—a Pi 5 is 600x faster (according to the video). But for the 'low-bandwidth' task of routing some banking traffic or running a few changedetection watches via a Hetzner VPS…

Well on the other hand, at which point does it become wasteful to run something when it gets less and less power efficient compared to newer devices? According to OP's benchmarks, the Pi 1 burns 2W constant to do essentially zero work and running that on a more modern device that's already running would use almost no extra power. Then again we use a kW or two to microwave things for minutes on a daily basis so who re…

Post by autoexec » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 9:24 PM UTC

bartread wrote: post #28

Do we think this page loads enough ads? The graphs are interesting but, really, if you’re considering your readers rather than SEOing for last decade’s search engine technology, you should lead with them and discuss the findings afterwards. I.e., get to the point quickly and then unpack the detail. It’s interesting seeing where the incremental vs revolutionary improvements have occurred. CPU-wise, a huge leap with th…

Post by JLO64 » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 9:29 PM UTC

while_true_ wrote: post #25

For $50 you can pick up a used mini PC with say, i5-6500T and 8GB ram, that'll be much faster than the Pi 5. And it'll be compatible with all Linux distros. Really the Pi 3 is good enough as an edge device where you want to hook up things to the GPIO pins.

Post by 3eb7988a1663 » Sat, Jan 24, 2026, 9:47 PM UTC

JLO64 wrote: post #37

while_true_ wrote: post #25

For $50 you can pick up a used mini PC with say, i5-6500T and 8GB ram, that'll be much faster than the Pi 5. And it'll be compatible with all Linux distros. Really the Pi 3 is good enough as an edge device where you want to hook up things to the GPIO pins.

But a PC like what you’re suggesting would result in a much higher energy bill compared to a Pi if you leave it on 24/7 to use as a server.