SuperFX overclocking mod just a fake?

[bacteria]

Drakon has shown that overclocking on Starfox makes the graphics smoother and also makes the game run a bit quicker too.

[goldenband]

It seems like someone needs to sit down and do a frame-by-frame analysis of these overclocks, to quantify exactly how many frames are being interpolated (if any) in each game, and how much is just the same frames being played back at a higher speed.

I wish I had the skills to do so, but I'll buy a beer for the person who does.

[Bad_Ad84]

Drakon has shown that overclocking on Starfox makes the graphics smoother and also makes the game run a bit quicker too.

You do not want the game to run faster tho. Making everything faster is pretty pointless.

[mdmx]

Star Fox 1, will actually run faster. Everything in the game moves faster though. Ideally you'd want to reprogram/tweak the game to run smoother with the added processing power to have more frames but not make the game play so much faster. I think this Vortex game was one of few Super FX games that actually is programmed in a way which will benefit from faster processing.

thanks for the feedback, that's the discussion I wanted to start.

In the meantime I also overclocked Dirt Trax FX. Again I cannot feel an improvement in the framerate. I hope to get my fingers on a Vortex cart soon.

btw, does Starfox 2 run smoother on a SuperFX2 cart? I will probably swap the Stunt Race FX pcb for a Doom pcb since the SRAM is only necessary for saving high scores.

[MottZilla]

No it does not. "Super FX 2" aka GSU-2 is identical to GSU-1 (Super FX 1 as some call them) other than addressing more ROM.

GSU-2 games can be 16 megabits. Mario Chip and GSU-1 only support 8 megabits. But Star Fox 2 is only 8 megabits. Both GSU-1 and GSU-2 can run in either 10.5mhz or 21mhz mode. Mario Chip cannot run in 21mhz mode, only 10.5mhz.

If you take Star Fox 2 and remove the opcode to enable high speed mode the game still runs but slower as the Super FX running slower than intended is now a bottleneck. But if you overclocked the Super FX while the work may be completed sooner, it still may not be the only bottleneck as I suggested before, the SNES CPU may be.

Again please do not modify more carts thinking "Super FX2" will run games better. GSU-1 and GSU-2 have the same performance. GSU-2 can run 16 megabit roms, thats all.

[l_oliveira]

Again please do not modify more carts thinking "Super FX2" will run games better. GSU-1 and GSU-2 have the same performance. GSU-2 can run 16 megabit roms, thats all.

Still Yoshi's Island is the cheapest/most abundant source of FX chips ... :shrug:

[Calpis]

WHAT??? Yoshi's Island is $15+ and a great game :'( How could anyone consider it as a donor?

[MottZilla]

I'm assuming because it was bundled people would assume it is abundant? I don't own Yoshi's Island yet. It's never been that cheap. If it was really cheap I'd have bought it by now.

[gorgyrip]

Please don't kill Yoshi!

[APE]

If people see the game running at what they perceive to be a better frame rate they will continue to induce the demand for these mods.

I fully agree with MottZilla that something has to be done to the code of the game first to take advantage of the increased clock rate but I will admit that I've been having trouble wrapping my mind around the whole thing. Given my propensity for technical knowledge (as lacking as it is in many areas) this just lends credence to why the average person would feel safe to assume that these mods are 100% a good thing.

Something more tangible in terms of a demonstration would likely convince anyone. If I understand things correctly, to simply overclock the SuperFX chip allows it to run with a higher clock rate but instead of using this greater amount of CPU time to do more calculations it simply spits out data faster to the rest of the console.

Which would be akin to having a fiber optic connection to the internet reducing your ping time to around 10ms but having the throughput of a 56k modem. The data gets there faster but it is still the same amount of data which is great if you're playing a game of chess or Age of Empires but absolutely terrible for a 50 player match of <insert FPS here>.

In this case it would appear that this causes a time dilation effect that is not desirable where as smoother gameplay is desirable. I'm probably wrong here somewhere and I'm curious to see where.

[l_oliveira]

It's VERY abundant here in Brazil. The cheapest FX game here. I suppose it has indeed to do with a bundle.

I was looking on "mercado livre" and I even found a loose Japanese copy for 19 USD. :shrug:

I guess the "donor cart" of choice obviously will vary on time following how market prices go. :rolleyes:

And don't come up with stuff like "don't kill yoshi" or anything like that. That's silly. :P

[APE]

If the EPROM and additional components will fit along side the original mask rom I don't see why it couldn't still be a Yoshi cart.