Unless you have seen MISTer running (especially on an fixed HZ old school CRT monitor) vs running that same thing emulated on on a modern cycle-exact emulator.

Unless you have seen MISTer running (especially on an fixed HZ old school CRT monitor) vs running that same thing emulated on on a modern cycle-exact emulator. The difference is really noticeable. This might come down to the emulator also running on a modern OS, which cannot guarantee at all times smooth framerates, whereas a dedicated FPGA can promise you that it's not running much more than the actual core needed to emulate that system. Especially on a 50/60Hz CRT monitor the difference and latency from the controller to pixels to screen is noticeably faster and stuff like scrolling the screen and sprites are buttery smooth, just like in the original hardware.