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The_Liquid_Laser said:

I don't know why I keep hearing that the NES had "normal" hardware.  It had same processor as the Atari 2600.  Nintendo seems to do its best work when the hardware is underpowered.

 

The_Liquid_Laser said:

The NES had a graphics chip.  However, it had the same processor as the Atari 2600.  The NES is notorious for flicker and slowdown because its processor was so weak.

 

No, it hadn't. They have processors of the same CPU family, both based on the 6502... not the same CPU!

The Atari 2600 had a dumbed down 6507, clocked 1.19 MHz, with very limited memory access: the chip can only address 8 Kb memory and the cartridge slot limited it further down to addressable 4 KB.

The NES had a Ricoh 2A03, clocked 1.79 MHz.

You also can't just ignore the different co-processors and suggest that both devices had the same limitations, but Nintendo was better in optimization.