C64 had a 1mhz 6502 and had way better speech in the form of SAM (software automated mouth). The c64 had a real sound chip (SID, arguably the best of its peers), but SAM did not use it except as a PWM output - it did the formant synthesis in software, and used the SID only to output the resulting 4-bit waveform.<p>(Which is 3 bits more than the ZX spectrum had... Or the PC effectively until 1990 or so when sound blaster became ubiquitous)