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 with on-board video enabled, Athlon II X4 620 was 29% faster than Phenom II X2 555, and Pentium E6300 was 21% faster than Phenom II X2 555. Under this scenario Core 2 Duo E7500 was 26% faster than Athlon II X4 635.

Installing a GeForce 9600 GT improved the performance for some CPUs. Phenom II X2 555 was now 33% faster, being 6% faster than Athlon II X4 620 and 8% faster than Pentium E6300. The installation of this video card improved Athlon II X4 635 performance by 35%, making it to be 12% faster than Core 2 Duo E7500.