Security consultant Alan Cecil has discovered that Super Nintendo consoles appear to run faster with age due to changes in one of their chips. The chip, known as the Sony SPC700 APU, uses a ceramic resonator running at 24,576 Hz and can increase its frequency by up to 182 Hz after 35 years.
Cecil, who administers TASBot, a tool-assisted speedrunning robot, noticed this trend in 2007 when SNES emulator programmers discovered that the chip ran faster at 32,040 Hz. This value was chosen to prevent some games from breaking due to timing issues.
Studies have shown that as the SNES consoles grow older, the SPC700 chip seems to run slightly faster, with the highest frequency recorded being 32,182 Hz. Although this increase is less than 1% of the original 32,000 Hz value, it could still affect in-game audio and break some games.
For speedrunners, this means that their timing and loading times may be affected by the increased chip frequency. However, for human speed runners, this will have no impact. Cecil is gathering more data to determine how time affects the console’s performance.
The study has implications for emulating SNES consoles in the future and preserving classic games. As components age, understanding their changes will help us learn how to deal with them. The finding is particularly interesting given that it could affect speedrunning bots but not human players.
Source: https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/nintendo/snes-consoles-appear-to-run-faster-with-age-apu-frequency-increased-by-up-to-182-hz-after-35-years