Why can most computers run modern games really well but extremely stutter when emulating old games

Question

Why can most computers run games like RDR2, Cyberpunk, etc. Really fast but when emulating ps3/Xbox360 games it lags and can barely run it?

In: 690

Answer 1

Computers have not gotten faster since the mid 2000s. They’ve gotten bigger. They can run a whole lot more processes per second than an old computer. But its not doing any of those processes faster. An old game can’t use that breadth of power, and by running it on an emulator you’re forcing it to do 2 or 3 additional processes for every one it would have before