In games, everything works in frames. Usually, AI, animation and physics can be completed in a single frame. But, it is very common to pipeline graphics to a separate thread that runs a frame behind everything else. The GPU frame and display frame (multiple frames on some TVs...) are pretty much impossible to eliminate.
Ideally, a game would sample input multiple times per frame, go with wide parallelism for every step (very difficult for graphics until DX12/Vulkan came along), start some GPU work before physics is completed, render in less than 1/60th of a second and the users would enable no-processing "game mode" on their lag-optimized TVs. But, that's all not common practice.
Ideally, a game would sample input multiple times per frame, go with wide parallelism for every step (very difficult for graphics until DX12/Vulkan came along), start some GPU work before physics is completed, render in less than 1/60th of a second and the users would enable no-processing "game mode" on their lag-optimized TVs. But, that's all not common practice.