With VirtualDub we converted a full-length DVD movie to DivX format and saw how long it took for this conversion to be completed. The DivX codec is capable of recognizing and using not only more than one CPU (i.e., more than one core), but also the SSE4 instruction set (feature not available on the reviewed CPUs).

The movie we chose to convert was Star Trek – The Motion Picture: Director’s Cut. We copied the movie to our hard disk drive with no compression, so the final original file on our HDD was 6.79 GB. After compressing it with DivX, the final file was only 767.40 MB, which is quite remarkable.

The results below are given in seconds, so the lower the better.

On DivX encoding using the on-board video Phenom II X2 555 was only 4% faster than Athlon II X4 620 and 20% faster than Pentium E6300. Athlon II X4 635 was 18% faster than Core 2 Duo E7500, which is impressive, since Core 2 Duo supports SSE4 instructions.

When we installed a GeForce 9600 GT performance increased less than 3% compared to the results taken with the on-board video, so we have to consider that there was no significant performance increase when we installed a “real” video.