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GBA

Overclock Your GBA?

by Jonathan Metts - April 26, 2004, 8:15 am EDT
Total comments: 15 Source: Slashdot

Believe it or not.

According to Slashdot.org's Games section, those clever folks at Ahead Games have figured out a method to overclock the Game Boy Advance. By tweaking settings on the GBA's processor, they have managed to double the system's speed.

Of course, the real question is why anyone would want or need this extra power. It seems that it will affect your games somehow; the Ahead Games rep mentions that F-Zero will play faster, and presumably other games will be affected in a similar way. But the real applications seem to lie in playing homebrew software and emulators.

Ahead Games is currently testing the mod, and they plan to offer it soon as "GBAccelerator". Like any other hardware mod, it will void your system's warranty and could possibly cause damage to the inner workings.

Talkback

S-U-P-E-RTy Shughart, Staff AlumnusApril 26, 2004

As I understand, you can do this with LOTS of consoles. But, y'know, there's not really a good reason, I suppose.

Ian SaneApril 26, 2004

You would have to be pretty skilled to want F-Zero to play faster. face-icon-small-smile.gif

This falls under the "neato but has no real use" category. Maybe if some shooters with a lot of lag come out it will be useful but other than that there's no real use.

Rob91883April 26, 2004

With the extra processing power, maybe the GBA will be capable of illegally emulating NES games.(that would be Naughty)

P.s.
This reminds me of the Xbox mod that has a Pentium 4.

KnowsNothingApril 26, 2004

I was surprised to see that the processor speed doubled, but that doesn't mean that it's particulaly useful......just cool.

enigma487April 26, 2004

yay. F-zero...faster... sounds fun...

thecubedcanuckApril 26, 2004

Does this mean I can hate F-Zero twice as much?

DrZoidbergJuan Schwartz, Staff WriterApril 27, 2004

i saw somewhere where you can overclock Sega Megadrives / Genesis (omgwtf cross country naming shenanigans) for some bizzaro reason.

KDR_11kApril 27, 2004

From what I understood they plan on using this to make a full SNES emulator (apparently they failed to emulate the sound chip so far). At least that's what was written on Slashdot. Homebrew devs might make better use of it, though.

EpitaphApril 28, 2004

They need a way so you just push a button and it changes, but i can totally understand why it would be usefull for emulation. I really love my dreamcast for that sole reason

mouse_clickerApril 28, 2004

Quote

Does this mean I can hate F-Zero twice as much?


No, it just means you can hate it twice as fast. face-icon-small-wink.gif

In any case, this sounds really cool, but, like a lot of other people said, pretty pointless. I think it's great that people are playing around with their consoles, though. face-icon-small-smile.gif

S-U-P-E-RTy Shughart, Staff AlumnusApril 28, 2004

Quote

Originally posted by: DrZoidberg
i saw somewhere where you can overclock Sega Megadrives / Genesis (omgwtf cross country naming shenanigans) for some bizzaro reason.


Wasn't blast processing just spot-overclocking the system? I heard that's what it was from a Linux nerd

DrZoidbergJuan Schwartz, Staff WriterApril 29, 2004

windows more like hitlows am i rite? bill fuhrer gates comin' like what.

EdisimApril 30, 2004

well, i think "loopy" has a working SNES emulator running on the GBA. It's not very fast (in fact, it's quite slow) and there's no sound, but it's still impressive that it could be done. I guess with this new development, this will be a little easier for loopy. Loopy has already written LoopyNES and also PocketNES (a great NES emulator you can use on your GBA... with the right hardware of course). I can say from personal experience that PocketNES works GREAT. Haven't tried the SNES one though.. compatability reportedly still isn't great (well, last i read..).

DrZoidbergJuan Schwartz, Staff WriterMay 01, 2004

i've allways wanted to play SNES games on GBA face-icon-small-cool.gif

Infernal MonkeyMay 01, 2004

Mario's Time Machine, Barbie's Holiday, Shaq Fu and Home Alone 2 comin' soon to a GBA near you. face-icon-small-cool.gif

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