PC Engine/TG Overclocking?

[MotherGunner]

Saw this article in another forum and I thought I'd post it.

http://nfggames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=2216


Comments?

[FM-77]

I've been planning to do this just for fun, but it's kinda sad that the music will go faster if you do it.

[termis]

Warped music, not to mention faster-than-intended gameplay for games that have no slow-down problems, would be the deal breaker.

[nat]

I remember reading about that some years ago but I never did it simply because of the aforementioned music factor.

[Turbo D]

I think the Turbografx handles better without it. Overclocking it  is purely for novelty purposes.

[nat]

Yeah, the TurboGrafx is really fast enough as it is.

Now the SNES, on the other hand....

[nodtveidt]

People have been overclocking the SNES for quite awhile now. It actually makes it a decent machine, CPU-wise, to do so.

[nat]

Exactly.

[SNKNostalgia]

The SNES may slow down, but there is more going on with screen. You got more frames, sprites, paralaxing BG and also has a more powerful sound chip. Of course it is going to slow down when they try to max out the action on it. The TG may be faster due to what it is trying to do with the graphics and sound. They try not to make games that have 100s of bullets all over the screen, 3 layered BGs scrolling, big moving sprite enemies with lots of frames. Just compare a little and you shall see. Spriggan Mark 2 was one of the only games I have played that has a lot of action going on for the Duo and I hate to say that there is a lot of glitching going on there.

The turbo may be fast for an 8 bit system with 16 bit like graphics, but it did it only by colors. Still, it pulled of what it was designed for really well.

[Michael Helgeson]

The video processors were 16-bit in the Pc-Engine/TG16.One 16-bit HuC6260 video color encoder and one 16-bit HuC6270A video display controller. You could say alot,but the Pc-Engine has some remarkable looking titles that the Snes didnt touch.. Yes,most tend to be on cd format,however the cd-drive did not add extra processors,just a new storage format and cd-audio for the music. Kabukiden,Legend Of Xanadu II,Rayxanber III,Forgotten Worlds,Gradius 2 and the Neo Arcade Card ports. There are many others,this doesn't even scratch the surface.

The Snes had alot of power,but to say it could blow the Pc-Engine away graphically is a mistake. Its only real advantage was Mode 7,if you consider it a advantage,and a better audio design,until you pit it against a Duo cd title music wise. What it could do graphically its cpu could not manage to keep up with anyway without issues if the game was pretty complex. It was painfully slow. The Pc Engines 8-bit main cpu was very very fast and very efficient. For a system a couple of years behind the Snes,it had no issues keeping up with providing the same kinda quality titles as the Snes and Genesis,esp graphically.

[GUTS]

SNK have you played Lords of Thunder or Sapphire?  They feature tons of parallax, huge enemies, tons of sprites, and no slowdown.  The only shooters on SNES that even come close to those are R-Type III and Macross, and Lords smokes both of them.

[FM-77]

Mike: The SNES could easily do The Legend of Xanadu 2. Ever played Ys V? Those games were released around the same time, and they look practically identical.

[nat]

SNK has obviously not played half the Turbo's game library.

You might say Mode 7 is the SNES's advantage, but take a game like Sapphire on the Turbo that puts Mode 7 in it's place with tons of smooth scaling, rotation, and lots of prerendered stuff including polygons. Producing such a game on the SNES might be possible, but it would probably be unplayable due to slowdown. And the music would be inferior.

The SNES may slow down, but there is more going on with screen. You got more frames, sprites, paralaxing BG and also has a more powerful sound chip.

Dude, the Turbo is the sprite-handling MACHINE. Parallax? Ever played Terraforming, Gate of Thunder, Lords of Thunder, Aero Blasters, Air Zonk, Shape Shifter, Sinistron, Sapphire, Shockman 3, the list goes on... and on and on... Most of these games throw tons of shit at you on-screen, and lots of it is absolutely huge. Also, most of these games have very little (if any) slowdown whatsoever.

[Necromancer]

The SNES may slow down, but there is more going on with screen. You got more frames, sprites, paralaxing BG and also has a more powerful sound chip. Of course it is going to slow down when they try to max out the action on it.

It's true that the SNES can 'handle' twice as many sprites, but not without a severe case of slowdownitis.  I challenge you to name one SNES game that couldn't be done on the TG-16 and explain to us why the TG-16 couldn't handle the sheer awesomeness of this uber SNES wonder game.  I'll concede that the SNES has greater color abilities, hardware scaling and rotation, and a damn fine sound chip (though not equal to red book). 

[nodtveidt]

The SNES may slow down, but there is more going on with screen. You got more frames, sprites, paralaxing BG and also has a more powerful sound chip. Of course it is going to slow down when they try to max out the action on it. The TG may be faster due to what it is trying to do with the graphics and sound. They try not to make games that have 100s of bullets all over the screen, 3 layered BGs scrolling, big moving sprite enemies with lots of frames. Just compare a little and you shall see.

What you say about the SNES isn't completely true. There's a reason the SNES had to have so many helper circuits...the CPU was a pussy. The sound chip doesn't require the CPU, it's largely independent...yet another helper circuit. Controlling backgrounds is not a hard thing to do either...you set it and forget it, it's a brainless operation. Furthermore, the SNES has no choice but to control all of its sprites at the same time; it's a stupid requirement of the architecture. What slows down games is logic cores...the CPU is a turtle and can only handle so many calculations, and since things like coldet require a lot of calcs, the CPU can't keep up because it's so bloody slow. If you're foolish enough to PUT 100 bullets on the screen at once on a processor that can barely do a simple add without coughing up a half-digested turkey, then you get what you deserve. The graphics and sound have virtually nothing to do with it, sorry to say.

It's kind of funny too, because on most architectures, graphics and sound are what usually slow them down, and it's logic that has no problem finding cycles. The SNES is completely backwards!