Intel i7

While I still have my friend's new HP EliteBook 8540w, I'm using it to convert some QT movies to MPEG4. This particular model has an Intel i7-820QM processor running at 1.73 GHz. The specs also say that at 1ku volume, it costs $546... just for the CPU! The HP is running Windows 7 Professional and the OS gives the system a rating of 5.9. In comparison, my 2 year old Sony Vaio has a T8100 running at 2.1 GHz but with 2 cores instead of 4 in the i7. Windows Vista rates it at only 3.1.

I was a bit disappointed in the speed of the HP. It didn't appear much faster than my Sony using QuickTime Pro 7.6.6 to export video files as MPEG4. I pulled up the Task Manager and it showed 8 CPU graphs, not 4, but the Resource Monitor app said 4 of the 8 CPUs were "parked", whatever that means. Also, the overall CPU utilization on the HP is running at only ~5% while my older & slower Sony is running at ~50%. Maybe the HP is not giving QuickTime priority? Is there a way to change this? The result is that my Sony is completing the task "faster" but using more of each CPU core.

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The PassMark CPU Benchmark gives the i7-820QM a score of 3525; the T8100 only has a score of 1353. My Mac mini's Core Duo T2300 is at 772 but it seems to play high bit-rate MPEG4 files in QuickTime with less lag than my Sony.