In Trinity review, I found very interesting that the latest WinZip version was in the growing list of GPU accelerated consumer applications.
I tried to verify the OpenCL speed up with a supported discrete video card (HD 5830 with Catalyst 12.4 WHQL): the compression time was indeed reduced (with better speed up than Llano/Trinity), but global GPU usage was about zero (with GPU/memory clocks fixed at idle values).
I checked these results with various utilities, such as Task Manager, Resource Monitor, Sysinternals Process Explorer, GPU-Z and AMD System Monitor: WinZip's GPU usage was exactly zero!
I noted that CPU usage was instead bigger, so I suppose that, enabling OpenCL option, WinZip can simply use a better multi-thread algorithm.
Task Manager is enough to confirm that WinZip thread count is significantly bigger, sometimes more than double, with OpenCL code path.
I found the maximum speed up with JPEG photos (250%), whereas the minimum with PCM audio (30%).
I think that would be nice if other enthusiasts performed similar tests on different configurations and perhaps with other "GPU accelerated" programs.
I tried to verify the OpenCL speed up with a supported discrete video card (HD 5830 with Catalyst 12.4 WHQL): the compression time was indeed reduced (with better speed up than Llano/Trinity), but global GPU usage was about zero (with GPU/memory clocks fixed at idle values).
I checked these results with various utilities, such as Task Manager, Resource Monitor, Sysinternals Process Explorer, GPU-Z and AMD System Monitor: WinZip's GPU usage was exactly zero!
I noted that CPU usage was instead bigger, so I suppose that, enabling OpenCL option, WinZip can simply use a better multi-thread algorithm.
Task Manager is enough to confirm that WinZip thread count is significantly bigger, sometimes more than double, with OpenCL code path.
I found the maximum speed up with JPEG photos (250%), whereas the minimum with PCM audio (30%).
I think that would be nice if other enthusiasts performed similar tests on different configurations and perhaps with other "GPU accelerated" programs.