16-bit Generation Wars!! Tech Specs and Graphics: Megadrive Vs Super NES Vs Neo Geo Vs PC Engine CD-ROMs/SuperGrafx Vs Megadrive+MegaCD

[Pemalite]

Salnax said:

Assorted Thoughts

• That SNES CPU is SLOW, and I suppose this is what Sega meant by not having "Blast Processing." Apparently this was essentially the same CPU used by the Apple IIGS computer, but even back in the 80's, people were complaining that the Apples IIGS was a slow computer. If anyone knows why this chip was used, I'd appreciate a TLDR version.

Comes down to cost and design choices.

Nintendo invested heavily into it's graphics and audio processing.. And because consoles are cost-sensitive devices, there had to be some corners cut... Which ended up being the CPU.

It did mean that games like Donkey Kong could truly shine on the hardware as it was front and center a visual and audio feast back in the day.
The SNES could have more colours+Mode 7 and sample real-life sounds.

One thing to keep in mind is that... People are comparing them based on clockrates alone, which would be highly erroneous, the SNES CPU could definitely punch above it's weight when programmed it's way.
The SNES CPU would actually require less cycles for most instructions, which some developers leveraged, which meant that both CPU's had relatively similar MIPS (Although Sega still had a slight theoretical advantage.)

The main reason why the 68000 typically legged it ahead of the SNES was actually due to the memory bus, it had a wider internal memory bus and a wider external memory bus, so it was far more efficient at shifting data around to be executed.

In the end due to these smaller memory nuances, the 68000 was fairly similar to Ricoh's performance on most instructions... But some instructions it was significantly better. (I.E. larger ones that would saturate the bus.)

Overall, Sega definitely had the hardware advantage when not accounting for external cart-processors or addons.