That's because they took our old small avatars and resized them to fit the new location. So your old, low res photo got stretched by about 50%. Best bet is to re-upload the same photo, it'll improve the quality.
Ah, no, there's more to it as to layout.
Try optioning a browser to not even load any graphics.
The"avatar' is either a solid-color-fill with large first letter of login-handle for those who have NOT uploaded an avatar, ELSE, a pale rim empty disk for those who have done.
Same layout. About HALF as space-efficient as the old one was?