I recall the same experience... Prior to seeing Wolfenstein3D, I had graduated from Intellivision to the Nintendo NES, and that constituted my main gaming exposure, other than some early versions of Flight Simulator. Wolfenstein3D blew me away with the graphics possible on a computer, and I probably jumped out of my seat a number of times as the immersion was like nothing I'd seen before. A lot of games with impressive graphics since then, but nothing like that first impression... Kind of a cool experience, yields a different sort of appreciation I think compared to that of younger gamers who have a more modern sense of graphics expectations.

I actually missed TechReport and a couple others I typically read. Thanks for the links.

ZankerH, I appreciate the comment, but you've actually got it backwards. The tick is a new shrink, the tock is a new architecture: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/silicon-innovations/intel-tick-tock-model-general.html

For people familiar with Intel's Tick-Tock cadence - this should not come as much surprise. Some people may have gotten caught up in marketing and expected more, but this is a "Tick" which brings a process shrink, power savings, and a modest performance increase. It is just about delivering that, though perhaps on the softer side of things.

Sandy Bridge was a Tock - a BIG performance improvement. Haswell should be a Tock - a BIG performance improvement.

On the tick, they set more modest performance goals, and focus on getting the process shrink right and tuning things up. On the tock, they should knock our socks off. So maybe Ivy Bridge is disappointing, but perhaps familiarity with their product development strategy helps to manage expectations

A roundup of reviews from the usual major sites as well as others not mentioned in the summary above: Overclockers Review, Anandtech Review, Anandtech Undervolting/Overclocking, HardwareSecrets, Bit-tech, PCPer, Tweaktown, Hard OCP, The Inquirer, Techspot, Computer Shopper, Tom's Hardware, ExtremeTech, PC Mag, Overclockers Club, and Guru 3d

Where are the other review links?

http://www.overclockers.com/amd-radeon-hd-7970-graphics-card-review/
http://www.madshrimps.be/articles/article/1000250/#axzz1hFPj6oTt
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7970/
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/49646-amd-radeon-hd-7970-3gb-review-25.html

1.9V lifespan would be measured in minutes or hours, not days or weeks. At room temperature, 1.9V would damage the processor almost immediately, if not kill it.

In fancy demonstrations and testing like this, the main magic comes not from voltage, but from super conductivity within the processor at the cold temperatures. The cold also increases the lifespan of the chip when using exorbitant amounts of voltage. This doesn't matter to most people or maybe even the poster I'm replying to, but I'm mentioning it here for the general knowledge of anyone who may be interested in speaking accurately about this.

Ultimately though, its the cold that raises the frequency ceiling - sure the voltage helps, but with super-cooled temperatures alone the frequency ceiling is raised even at default voltage./p.

In regards to frequency scaling for Moore's Law, that came to an end in 2004 essentially. It's one topic wikipedia has right if you want to read the details. These days, moore's law only holds true for transistor density, which is why everything is multicore, power efficiency, and integrating more features on chip - there are extra transistors they can fit on the chip and they are finding more things to use that die area for.

I also attended the event, and wrote up a more detailed account of the demonstration and word record result for the overclocking audience: http://www.overclockers.com/amd-fx-bulldozer-breaks-cpu-frequency-world-record/