Why do you need a NASA computer to emulate a game system from 2001 that in terms of raw power barely outperformed a middle of the road computer from 1995?

Question

It always puzzled me why exactly video game console emulation is so resource-intensive. Despite the systems themselves often being about as powerful as a severely outdated (at the time of the system’s release) PC, their emulators always require ridiculously powerful PCs to be able to run the games at full speed and native resolution. Why exactly is it so resource-intensive? I’m not looking for an explanation along the lines of “it’s resource-intensive cause it takes a lot of power to emulate the whole environment” cause it’s basically like answering with “it requires a lot of power cause it requires a lot of power”. I want to know *exactly* why I need a 4-core, 4.5GHz Intel i7 10th gen to be able to run a 2007 PS3 game in 720p, 13 years after its release.

In: Technology

Answer 1

For every calculation the original game/system makes, your computer needs to make 10 (guessing number) calculations to simulate the original system. They don’t have the same tools/operations/instructions to be able to do exactly what the original system would do with the new one.