Aging SNES Consoles Show Surprising Speed Boost — APU Frequency Rises by Up to 182 Hz Over 35 Years

Alan Cecil, known for his expertise in security consultation and administration of the tool-assisted speedrun robot TASBot, has uncovered an intriguing development regarding Super Nintendo consoles. It turns out these classic systems have become a touch quicker, all thanks to one of their integral components. A report from 404 Media highlights that the Super Nintendo’s Sony SPC700 audio processing unit operates at a digital signal processing rate originally set at 32,000 Hz. Back in 2007, though, SNES emulator developers identified that the chips actually hummed along at a slightly brisker 32,040 Hz. This prompted them to adjust to this value to maintain game integrity.

The SPC700 chip, a coprocessor crucial to the SNES’s function, derives its frequency from a ceramic resonator clocked at 24,576 Hz. Yet, this delicate electronic part is vulnerable to shifts in behavior when exposed to heat and various environmental influences.

In February, Cecil turned to Bluesky, using the TASBot handle to share his hypothesis and called upon SNES enthusiasts to contribute their data. Early results are revealing a fascinating pattern: as these consoles age, the SPC700 chip incrementally picks up speed. The top recorded frequency so far is 32,182 Hz. While that’s less than a 1% increase from the initial 32,000 Hz, it could still have consequences for in-game audio fidelity and cause issues in certain games.

### The Impact of SPC700’s Frequency Boost on Speedrunning

Now, you might wonder, why does this matter? Well, while the SPC700 only manages audio data for the SNES, its increased efficiency might not alter your gaming experience unless you’re focused on speedrunning. For those in the speedrunning community or crafting bots reliant on pinpoint timing, the swifter loading times due to the expedited SPC700 could indeed have implications. This is particularly relevant in moments when the screen goes dark upon stage completion and the console busily preps the data for the next level. If the audio processor can feed data to the CPU faster than originally anticipated, our beloved loading times shrink.

For the average player, this might sound like a boon. However, for speedrunners and their bots, it poses challenges for maintaining accurate time records. Thankfully, this performance uptick doesn’t impact human competitors.

Cecil weighs in, “The full extent of this issue on lengthy speedruns isn’t completely understood yet. What we do know is there’s some influence on data transfer speeds between the CPU and the APU due to this change.”

TASBot’s involvement, which relies on millisecond precision, might see more pronounced effects as time progresses. Nonetheless, Cecil is amassing more data to understand the aging console’s transformations. As these components — just like countless others — continue to age, understanding and adapting to these changes becomes vital. Future emulation efforts rely on this knowledge to preserve the legacy games that shaped our early gaming experiences.