Bit level vs byte level

Am I correct in believing that video game consoles such as the NES used graphics and instructions at the bit level?  Why don't modern operating systems use instructions that are only a few bits rather than bytes?  You'd be doing the same operations at 1/8 the scale.

>>6
Why oh why do everyone keep bringing up FFs huge memory usage? It's in the past, now chrome is the king of memory usage.

>>41
Just wait 'til they finally release a 64bit version.