Raspberry Pi 4 has suddenly turned up in an odd new variant that has the tech community talking. It is not a deliberate performance upgrade. It is a direct consequence of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom sweeping through Silicon Valley. With Big Tech companies buying up the DRAM supply to feed their enormous data centers, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has had to make a bold move to stay afloat: changing the hardware design of its best-selling product line to cope with a worldwide shortage of components.
Raspberry Pi 4 "Dual RAM": Stopgap Fix or Worthwhile Improvement?
With DRAM in short supply and prices climbing by the day, the engineering team in the UK decided to release a new variant called "Dual RAM" (PCN 45). The biggest change, as the name suggests, is that the board uses two smaller RAM chips instead of a single large one as before. It is a very flexible approach that lets the company source components from a wider range of suppliers and avoid depending on one memory chip that keeps selling out.
Physically, if you flip over this new Raspberry Pi 4, you will see a second memory chip on the back. To make that possible, the company had to rearrange some passive components on the board. Even so, the overall size and the placement of the ports are unchanged, which means you can keep using your old case without any trouble. Notably, this version also inherits the advanced "intrusive reflow soldering" technique from the Raspberry Pi 5, which makes the solder joints stronger and reduces electronic waste.
Performance Stays the Same, but What Should Users Know?
The biggest question users are asking right now is: "Will using two RAM chips make it slower or hotter?" The manufacturer has moved to reassure them, saying it has tested the board "extensively" and that the Dual RAM version performs exactly the same as the original. From processing speed to hardware compatibility, everything works smoothly, as if nothing had changed.
There is one small software hurdle, though, that you have to clear. Because the hardware layout is different, the operating system needs a new "map" to find and access the second memory chip on the back. As a result, you must update the bootloader to the latest version (pieeprom-2026-01-09.bin). Our sincere advice is to use the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS or update the Linux kernel so everything runs reliably the moment you plug it in.
To find out whether you have this special version, you can check by eye: the front of the board is printed with the manufacturing year "2025" and the back has an extra RAM chip. Or, for a more technical check, run the command `cat /proc/cpuinfo` in Terminal; if the Model line reads "Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Rev 1.5", congratulations, you are holding a "witness to history" from the era of soaring memory chip prices.
In practice, the recent price increases are also an unavoidable result of the AI industry's thirst for memory. The Dual RAM version is a commendable effort to keep stock available on shelves. If you plan to buy an embedded computer right now, don't be surprised if you receive a slightly different version, and remember to update the software right away to avoid minor, unnecessary glitches.
