Saturn emulation is very solid at this point. But yeah, for a long time it was quite poor.
https://mednafen.github.io/documentation/ss.html#Section_int...
>Mednafen's Sega Saturn emulation is extremely CPU intensive. The minimum recommended CPU is a quad-core Intel Haswell-microarchitecture CPU with a base frequency of >= 3.3GHz and a turbo frequency of >= 3.7GHz(e.g. Xeon E3-1226 v3), but note that this recommendation does not apply to any unofficial ports or forks, which may have higher CPU requirements.
Those minimum specs are about the same as what's required to emulate a Wii via Dolphin, two generations ahead of the Saturn!