If the purpose is to read a 16-bit TIFF and then write an 8-bit TIFF back out, then the processor won't have much effect on the speed. This is file i/o processing that would mostly be affected by the disk speed and possibly RAM. For example, a solid state drive may perform better than a standard drive.
You also will need to program in IDL regardless of what routine you use (ENVI or IDL). IDL/ ENVI programming is how ENVI performs 'batch' processing of multiple files. I would try using
http://www.harrisgeospatial.com/docs/...
but using a linear stretch with a min/max of 0-255. Then write a foreach loop to process each file.