Let’s use Balders Gate as an example… the majority of the really “graphic” intensive parts of the game are the cut scenes and not the actual game. So why would it need a substantial GPU? Isn’t it just playing back a prerecorded video much like a TV would? Or am I thinking of this wrong?
In: Technology
A TV only displays 2-dimensional pictures. That is really, really simple — we figured out how to do this with purely electrical circuits long before computers as we know them were a thing.
A PC/game console does that, too, but it creates the pictures first, from 3-dimensional data. That is the expensive part. Baldur’s Gate is not like a movie. You can tell by changing your graphics setting: It will change the way that cut scenes look, as well as everything else — so it must all be rendered in real time.
edit: Today’s TV signal often comes in as a digital stream, so TVs include relatively weak computers to decode that. But it remains a constant stream of pre-rendered 2-dimensional pictures. Your PC can do this without breaking a sweat.
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