Benchmarked: Quad Core i7 iMac is Wicked Fast
Gizmodo’s Brian Lam tested the new 27-inch Quad-Core i7 iMac and found it’s a beast. Geekbench benchmarks showed a 2x to 3x improvement over the Core 2 Duo model, but most impressive was a real world DVD ripping test, using Handbrake:
On the Core i7 iMac, it took 43 minutes to rip a DVD, Storm Riders, a surfing film from the ’70s featuring Gerry Lopez (my favorite) and others. On the Core 2 Duo machine, it took 147 minutes! I know this is basically a DVD read test coupled with decoding and video conversion, but the results have me excited because this is a real task that takes my computer a long time to do, performed by a program that hasn’t been revised in a year.
Benchmarked: The Quad-Core i7 iMac is Super Fast
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac, and author of three books about technology culture: 
