Interesting that you mention FFT. These days, almost every calculation pops up instantly. You can simultaneously count/sum/average thousands of Excel cells faster than you can blink.

But last week I was performing (n = 1024) FFTs and was surprised to see it take a full 30 seconds, even on a new machine with quad-core running a bazillion biggy hertz. Clearly, gamers, with their fancy-schmancy ray-tracing, have nothing on Monsieur Fourier.