That doesn't really have much to do with it. The big difference is that now we are compositing 2D UI using GPUs, which require double buffering if you want to avoid tearing.
Older 2D accelerators had hardware support for beam-avoiding blits that allowed for single-buffered compositing. You could still see unsynchronized blits between distinct buffers, though. We could easily build 2D accelerators that work like this today, and they would use less power than GPUs.
Older 2D accelerators had hardware support for beam-avoiding blits that allowed for single-buffered compositing. You could still see unsynchronized blits between distinct buffers, though. We could easily build 2D accelerators that work like this today, and they would use less power than GPUs.