Clock rate

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Revision as of 13:55, 28 March 2010 by Tepples (talk | contribs) (turned timing quirks into total dots per frame; added vertical scan rate and NTSC-specified tolerance for master clock speed)
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Consoles in the USA and Europe run at different speeds due to the different television standards used. The main differences between the NTSC and PAL PPUs is as follows:

Property NTSC PAL
Master clock speed 21.477272 MHz ± 40 Hz
236.25 MHz / 11 by definition
26601712 Hz ± ?
26601712.5 MHz by definition
PPU clock speed 21.477272 MHz / 4 26.601712 MHz / 5
Corresponding CPU clock speed 21.47MHz / 12 = 1.78977267 MHz
3 dots per CPU cycle
26.601712 MHz /16 = 1.662607 MHz
3 1/5 dots per CPU cycle
Height of picture 240 scanlines 240 scanlines
Nominal visible picture height
(see Overscan)
224 scanlines 268 scanlines
Length of VBLANK 20 scanlines 70 scanlines
Total number of dots per frame 341*261 + 340.5 = 89341.5
(scanline 261 is one dot shorter in every other frame)
341*312 = 106392
Vertical scan rate 60.0988 Hz 50.0070 Hz

Other than these differences and color encoding, the NTSC and PAL PPUs function exactly the same.