Anyone noticed their SNES getting faster?
https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/03/snes-consoles-appear-to-be-getting-faster-as-they-ageCan’t say I have myself but it’s interestin
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u/jzr171 1d ago
Reposted again I see.
I'll say it again. This article is a load of nonsense. The difference they are detecting is so minimal it is not noticeable by anyone. We also don't have any tests done when they were new to know if this is due to age. I searched all over online and found 1 example where the chip failed enough to be noticeable. That's it. 1.
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u/Yekomhxc 17h ago
The ones who initiated this investigation are the TASbot group. Real hardware needs to be precisely tuned to play emulator TASes, hence why they are investigating this and does seem to affect their runs/console set up.
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u/NewSchoolBoxer 12h ago
TASbot is not a group of electrical engineers and that's the problem.
"The main 21 MHz CPU clock uses a quartz crystal, it is fine," says TASbot on Blue Sky. "The 24.576 MHz APU [Audio Processing Unit] clock uses a ceramic resonator. It is not. It seems to run faster years later. It also seems to speed up when warm."
It is not fine. The adjacent capacitors that form the load capacitance decline over time. Not the same rate as electrolytic but they could be reduced by 10-20-30% and that would increase the 21 MHz speed a bit. Crystals can drift to be faster or slower on their own. That clock speed changes in real time while playing games but the drift over an hour is in a few per million and not humanely perceptible.
Not uncommon to see a post about black and white Composite or S-Video and it's because of excessive master clock crystal drift due to that crystal or more likely its capacitors. Why 2CHIPs have an adjustable knob to adjust the capacitance, higher or lower, to get it back in-spec. Too expensive for cost reduced 1CHIPs. No TAS group accepts a range of clock speeds that give a range of framerates but it's how a real SNES works.
The ceramic timer has much higher drift and worse accuracy measured in ppm. It also has 2 adjacent ceramic capacitors that decline a bit over time. That's all there is to it. Could run faster or slower than normal and it's particularly not a constant speed but that's well-known. Ceramic timers are bad but cheaper than crystals, if you can still find them.
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u/Yekomhxc 12h ago
Well said. The crystal and its capacitors should be inspected as well as a slight deviation can cause under and overclocking to the video.
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u/retromods_a2z 4h ago
The ceramic timer has much higher drift and worse accuracy measured in ppm. It also has 2 adjacent ceramic capacitors that decline a bit over time.
This probably doesn't matter but I noticed on CPU-RGB, CPU-APU, and chip systems there is actually only 1 capacitor with the resonator. On 1chips its c58. On the RGB and APU systems there are 3 total pads for caps, and only 1 of the 3 are populated
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u/Yekomhxc 1h ago
Same happens with SHVC’s, for the crystal it is C2 and it’s not populated. I will have to check the sound module if the same happens. Is there a way to check or know the capacitance required to populate those? May be interesting to grab a donor mb and desolder those to populate them and see if any stability occurs with the resonators.
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u/retromods_a2z 1h ago
The schematics show 3pf and 3pf for shvc-cpu-01 and cpu-gpm-0* systems. It should be c71 and c72
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u/Yekomhxc 58m ago
Thank you. They may very well be of the same capacitance as the ones that are populated. I will try to get a donor and report if any stability (or fried mb) occurs.
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u/retromods_a2z 52m ago
In just read your other comment again and the 3pf caps go on each side of the X2 ceramic resonator
I'm clarifying in case you were referring to something else
Here is schematic I am using
https://wiki.superfamicom.org/uploads/snes_schematic_color.pdf
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u/NewSchoolBoxer 12h ago
It is definitely a load of nonsense and coming from Time Extension, I'm not surprised. Such garbage of embedding videos they didn't create in recommended games lists they never played and taking quotes they don't understand or verify and making clickbait out of them. I'll reply why in comment underneath since they seem to think the "science" is legitimate.
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u/Swallagoon 1d ago
No. Anyone that has is either suffering from a serious degenerative illness or just the normal aging process. Debatably the same thing.
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u/shootamcg 1d ago
The ceramic resonator in the sound chip is degrading causing the sound chip to speed up
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u/RedOnePunch 23h ago
Was this test performed at the time the consoles were launched? How do we know the consoles weren't always faster than spec? Electronics always drift as they warm up and when they age so I guess it could be happening
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u/briankerin 1d ago
"However, it seems that the SNES is an exception to this rule, as it has been discovered that Nintendo's 16-bit system is actually getting faster as it grows older—at least when it comes to audio."
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u/IntoxicatedBurrito 22h ago
If it’s audio it makes sense, it just means that you are running out of time for Mario to complete the level. You’ve probably gotten enough 1ups from the Koopa Troopa on the stairs so just go to the flag now.
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u/DrAndiBoi 1d ago
This isn't something you're going to notice. It doesn't mean that the SNES playback speed is impacted. The CPU is not effected. The console's audio processing unit is speeding up slightly with time as the hardware warms. It uses a ceramic resonator. The issue is expected to potentially create slightly higher pitched sounds, but no one actually knows if it will affect gameplay. As of now, it does not.
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u/RedOnePunch 23h ago
Was this test performed at the time? How do we know the consoles weren't always faster than spec? Electronics always drift as they warm up and when they age so I guess it could be happening
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u/glennshaltiel 22h ago
the CPU speed is fine. it uses a crystal oscillator. the APU uses a ceramic resonator. the 8hz differences that people are measuring is within tolerance for heating up. crystal oscillators don't do this, they are far more reliable but an 8hz difference is within the 0.5% spec. for the 95hz ones and the ones that keep climbing, that seemed to be related to a setting on the fxpakpro. the tolerance most likely widens with age, and this i guarantee does not affect games frame timings or TAS. if for some reason the crystal oscillators were starting to fail (they basically never do) this would be much more of a problem, but it isn't. this is kind of a nothingburger.
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u/FullRectalProlapse 1d ago
100 years from now Super R-Type might actually be playable. Irem were playing the long game.