After Effects is a very well-known program for video post-production, to add animations and visual effects in videos. To evaluate the performance of each CPU running this program, we ran a workload consisting of 25 compositions that applied several filters and effects to a variety of input file types such as PSD (Photoshop), AI (Illustrator), EPS, and TIF. After each filter was applied, the composition was rendered to an uncompressed AVI file of the same resolution as the input files. The results below are the time each CPU took to finish the whole batch, given in seconds, so the lower the number the better.

On After Effects CS4 Celeron E3200 was 16.01% faster than Athlon II X2 240e. Athlon II X3 435, on the other hand, was 11.70% faster than Pentium E5200. Athlon II X4 620 was 12.12% faster than Athlon II X3 435 and 38.09% faster than Athlon II X2 240e.

Once again installing a GeForce 9600 GT didn’t make any difference in performance.