The animation when walking isn't as smooth as it was in 1.4.7 (although it's way better since the mc-8824 has been fixed), every second or so there's a stutter of about 1/100th of a second.
It's kind of looks like the jitter from the minecart bug that was before but to a much lesser degree.
There seems to be no stutter when going on a minecart though, only when waking.
Environment
Java 1.7u17 x64
Windows 8 Professional 64 bit
NVIDIA 8800GT 314.07 driver
Intel Q6600 OC@3GHz
Is this still a concern in the current Minecraft version 1.6.2 / Launcher version 1.1.3 ? If so, please update the affected versions in order to best aid Mojang ensuring bugs are still valid in the latest releases/pre-releases.