The 68000 also had a shared codebase with arcade games, where the 68000 saw widespread use, allowing more efficient arcade conversions. In addition, the 68000 has faster memory bandwidth (due to having a wider data bus) and more registers. So while both are on-par for basic arithmetic involving smaller numbers, the 68000 is faster for more complex arithmetic involving large numbers or more precision (such as calculating 3D polygons, for example). While the 68000 and 5A22 are roughly on-par for arithmetic involving smaller 8-bit numbers (up to 256), the 68000 is faster for arithmetic involving larger 16-bit numbers (up to 65,536) and 32-bit numbers (up to 4 billion). The wider multiplier and divider gives the 68000 a performance advantage for arithmetic. This means that the Mega Drive is essentially a hybrid 16/32-bit system, whereas the SNES is a hybrid 8/16-bit system. The 68000 also has a hybrid 16/32-bit instruction set, 16×16-bit multiplier, and 32/16-bit divider, whereas the SNES has a hybrid 8/16-bit instruction set, 8×8-bit multiplier, and 16/8-bit divider. This means that, in a single cycle, the 68000 can process a 32-bit instruction while accessing 16-bit data from memory, whereas the S-CPU in a single cycle can process a 16-bit instruction while only accessing 8-bit data from memory. The 68000 has a wider 32-bit internal data bus (double the S-CPU's 16-bit internal data bus) and a wider 16-bit external data bus (double the S-CPU's 8-bit external data bus). The 68000 is a hybrid 16/32-bit CPU, whereas the S-CPU is a hybrid 8/16-bit CPU. The 68000's faster performance essentially comes from having a wider data bus, or higher 'bits', than the S-CPU. In other words, the 68000's higher clock rate is not the reason the 68000 performs faster than the S-CPU.

While the S-CPU did run slower in clock cycles per second, it required less clock cycles for most instructions, giving it an overall comparable MIPS (million instructions per second) performance to the 68000. However, the idea of simply comparing CPU clock rates to determine performance, regardless of other characteristics, is commonly known as the megahertz myth.

Sega's Motorola 68000 processor is clocked at 7.67 MHz, compared to the 3.58 MHz clock speed of Nintendo's Ricoh 5A22 S-CPU (an adaptation of the 65c816 with additional features). The Mega Drive's main CPU (central processing unit) is clocked over two times faster than the one in its rival product, the SNES.

Genesis vs snes versions