I can't verify that, but it's kinda unfortunate that to have clear text rendering we have to process a much larger number of pixels, though it may be the logical solution. I hope you're right.
I think it's inevitable as per the laws of physics/optics/etc -- as long as fonts have curves, to have them render clear we need to process a much larger number of pixels.
I guess it's comes from information theory (Shannon/Nyquist etc).
I feel like this is not an issue with hi-dpi displays anymore (plus sub-pixel antialiasing and other niceties).