New report suggests SNES consoles are seemingly getting faster with age

In a rather bizarre turn of events, it appears that older SNES consoles are actually getting faster with age rather than degrading completely. As spotted by Time Extension earlier this week, SNES consoles are seemingly getting faster at audio processing as they get older, at least according to some tests that a Bluesky user has run. For disclosure, none of this is super scientific and the sample size isn’t wide enough to make a definitive claim, but it is repeatable across various consoles.

Bluesky user TASBot made a post asking for users to run a specific ROM test on their SNES consoles with a flash cart. From their own preliminary testing, it seemed as if the SNES was getting faster with age as it would begin to play audio at a higher pitch. As they explain, “The main 21 MHz CPU clock uses a quartz crystal. It is fine. The 24.576 MHz APU clock uses a ceramic resonator. It is not. It seems to run faster years later. It also seems to speed up when warm. We should find out how real hotplate% is.”

 

 

The specific ROM was a speed test for the SNES processors, including the APU (audio processing unit). What would happen after several minutes is that the APU would increase in speed despite the console having a fixed architecture. The cause of this is unknown, but it either has to do with the age of the component or potentially the heat output of the device. Users noted that as their SNES consoles heated up a bit, their APUs would run faster. TASBot eventually collected 143 samples and they all had the same behavior, even if the numbers weren’t exactly the same. 

Based on 143 responses, the SNES DSP rate averages 32,076 Hz, rising 8 Hz from cold to warm. Warm DSP rates go from 31,965 to 32,182 Hz, a 217 Hz range. Therefore, temperature is less significant. Why? How does it affect games? We do not know. Yet. See docs.getgrist.com/fpwWkqDcnxXR… for more.

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— TASBot (@tas.bot) March 6, 2025 at 5:10 PM

 

While this is a pretty fascinating little tidbit about now 35 year-old hardware, the real question about the effects of a faster APU came from the speedrunning community. If a SNES is running faster as it gets older, does that mean speedruns made in the last decade or so are inaccurate? TASBot doesn’t believe so as this phenomenon seems to only impact the APU. What that leads to is simply audio playing at a higher pitch or a faster rate. There could be some gameplay effect, but nothing is known yet.

Even if this speedup amounts to nothing more than audio being inaccurate, it’s kind of amazing that older hardware is getting “better” as it gets older. At the same time, I do have to wonder if an APU speeding up after a couple of decades is pointing to the consoles entering a death state. As one user on Time Extension noted, “Sounds like a lightbulb! They get brighter just before they die!”

 

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