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Overclocking the Super Nintendo

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the because-you-can dept.

Robert Ivy writes "The Super Nintendo is a tricky piece of hardware, but I have finally managed to overclock it up to 5.1 MHz. At this speed, the sprites scatter across the screen; this is likely a sync issue since the CPU is running so far out of spec. I plan on trying lower speeds soon and I will update the guide on UCM." Thank god we got that out of the way!

3 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. An A for the effort by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Don't get me wrong, great job OCing your console, but ... what purpose does it serve? If it's done to prove that it's possible, then more power to you.

    But if the plan was to get "more" out of your console, I guess it wasn't too bright. Console proggers always relied on the fact that consoles, unlike PCs, were set in stone. You had THAT CPU, THAT GPU, THAT memory and that's something you can rely on. I.e., they didn't do what PC game creators have to do today: Take into account different hardware specs and take care of timing.

    More often than not, they used the CPU clock as the timing device (everyone who ever played Wing Commander on a 486 knows the effect you get when you do that on a platform that can very well change the hardware). So if you tweak the CPU, you get a game that runs "too fast".

    But little else.

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  2. Whaddaya mean "what purpose"? by user24 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I'm sickened by the amount of people on here saying "... but why?".

    Why?? WHY?? Because he's a GEEK, Dammit! Just because it doesn't have a buzzword associated with it, or because it's not to do with google, or didn't come out in the last 15 minutes, doesn't mean it's not cool.

    *wanders off mumbling about these younguns..*

  3. Secret of Mana by siegesama · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This may actually be useful! There are a number of games, among them that holy-of-holies, The Secret of Mana, that during very busy scenes with all three characters and a number of enemies, will experience slow-down and flickered sprites as an error. Does a sped-up CPU do anything at all to remedy this?

    Once he's got it so it's only sped (and not fucked) up, I'd love to find out if that would help prevent those slow-downs

    I'll bet nobody was expecting an actual response to this story, heh

    --
    what the hell is a 'junk character', anyway?