Yes, yes it is. I remember back then I had music as ADPCM WAV because playing MP3 took most of my CPU. I remember 5M/s disk sounded fast. I remember being afraid to move a mouse when writing a CD. I'm running at the same speed, so I still expect some things to take under the accepted no-wait 300 ms - but power? I have that.

As for optimization, it matters where. Some things are better left as they fall, others aren't. On my quad core OC machine I ended up unrolling loops to squeeze the last fraction out of an algorithm. If it's the algo that compares pixels in an image similarity construct that batch-compares all images in a folder to all others detecting similar pseudo-dupes, you better believe it. It has assembler in it.

And what's nerdy about knowing that you have squeezed 2 more ticks out of a loop when sitting on a water cooled, barely-stable, one degree away from failure, billion bytes juggling machine? Nothing I say.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a grin to wipe off my face.