Speeding up WinRAR?

[Nocturnal]

I have a 3200 Winchester and 2GB of Crucial Ballistix memory. Whenever I try to unrar several files that combine into one, my system lags like crazy. Would a dual core processor help in this type of thing? The files are on a 300GB SATA Maxtor Maxline III drive. Thanks in advance.

 

[Pabster]

Yes, as WinRAR 3.60 supports multithreading. As for what would speed it up... A faster CPU, and a SCSI RAID array.

 

[oog]

It would also help to have the output of unrar go to a different physical drive.

 

[Lord Evermore]

I think WinRAR stores the data in the system TEMP folder anyway, then copies it to the destination drive, so making the destination a different drive would only affect that copy step. I can't remember, it's been a few months since I used WinRAR instead of 7-Zip. That might still be significant, but wouldn't affect the lag of the unpacking process.

At the very least, even without a multi-threaded application, the system would respond better with dual-core since one core would be free to do other things while the other was busy with the extraction.

I just upgraded from an XP 2800+ though, and I don't recall all that much lag on that system when using WinRAR even on extractions where the destination file was a couple of gigs, made up of 2 to 10 parts.

 

[JackBurton]

Originally posted by: Nocturnal
I have a 3200 Winchester and 2GB of Crucial Ballistix memory. Whenever I try to unrar several files that combine into one, my system lags like crazy. Would a dual core processor help in this type of thing? The files are on a 300GB SATA Maxtor Maxline III drive. Thanks in advance.

A faster CPU is the main thing that will speed up compression and decompression. Dual core would be ideal.

 

[0roo0roo]

you can specify the temp directory. i set it to current to save on copy step. and yes, dual core probalby helps, its the whole point, less lag. and since its supposedly multithreading now, that mac pro with quad core....

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
you can specify the temp directory. i set it to current to save on copy step. and yes, dual core probalby helps, its the whole point, less lag. and since its supposedly multithreading now, that mac pro with quad core....

When you say you set it to current do you mean you set it to the exact directory that you'd want the files unrarred into?

 

[Auric]

HT or DC helps significantly regardless of WinRAR's multithreading option however that does give a li'l boost. It's been a long time since I used a Celeron and the main reason I did so only temporarily was that despite the low price and equivalent single task performance, the multi-tasking was poor compared to what I had become accustomed to with HT. Athlon 64 were touted as high performance but that likewise can really only apply to a single task such as a game. DC should make an even greater difference than betwixt SC & HT.

Large media file archives may not even be stored with compression in which case CPU usage is minimal and the main limiting factor is storage performance. Unarchiving is then just a copy operation and will be twice as fast to a seperate HDD. So your lag could originate from either and be exacerbated depending upon the further demands of concurrent tasks.

For the temp folder setting, you will notice there is a toggle to only use it for removeable disks -thus speeding up regular HDD un/archiving. Presumably the "current folder" it then uses is the destination.

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: Nocturnal

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
you can specify the temp directory. i set it to current to save on copy step. and yes, dual core probalby helps, its the whole point, less lag. and since its supposedly multithreading now, that mac pro with quad core....

When you say you set it to current do you mean you set it to the exact directory that you'd want the files unrarred into?

yes, there should be a "current" directory option that uses whatever directory u have the archive in

 

[zephyrprime]

The biggest thing will be to use a second hard drive on a different channel. Dual core would provide only a small benefit in comparison to getting another drive.

 

[Jeff7]

To keep it from lagging the system:
Options -> Settings
General tab
System section
Check "Low Priority"

It'll run in the background then.


Either that, or click the Background button when it shows the compression dialogue box.

 

[Auric]

Hey, I think you just torpedoed an excuse for an upgrade... I suppose we'll have to leave it up to Nocturnal whether that is a good thing or a bad thing

 

[0roo0roo]

Originally posted by: zephyrprime
The biggest thing will be to use a second hard drive on a different channel. Dual core would provide only a small benefit in comparison to getting another drive.

no, you'd still be lagged by the single cpu. one core dealing with harddrives+rar other one is free. unless you need to heavily access that drive too with another app then its going to be smooth sailing. yes u can force it to be lower priority or just set it, but it slows progress than

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Auric
Hey, I think you just torpedoed an excuse for an upgrade... I suppose we'll have to leave it up to Nocturnal whether that is a good thing or a bad thing

I know, I'm no fun.
I myself am trying to justify an upgrade to dual core, but it's rather difficult, especially since I seem to have just solved my stability problems, courtesy of a 0.025v boost in my CPU voltage. Though they are still crazy - it's set to 1.65 in BIOS, but MBM reports a crazy range from 1.55 - 1.62.

 

[Nocturnal]

Oh by all means, I'm definately planning on upgrading my processor, motherboard and power supply once money permits lol. This indeed does spark a reason why I have to upgrade. First I have to check and make sure it's okay with the wife lol.

 

[Rubycon]

Use large system cache in Windows. It will help enormously.

 

[Boogak]

Unrar'ing files doesn't peg my CPU at 100% so I'm inclined to say a faster processor wouldn't help much. Having faster / more optimized storage system would be my bet.

 

[Nocturnal]

Originally posted by: Boogak
Unrar'ing files doesn't peg my CPU at 100% so I'm inclined to say a faster processor wouldn't help much. Having faster / more optimized storage system would be my bet.

Well according to the previous posters in this thread it's quite obvious they have experience with dual core processors and using compressor software and I will believe people who have had first hand experience with it. So It would be safe to assume that a dual core processor would indeed actuall help or benefit one if they're performing heavy unrarring duties.

 

[Gl4di4tor]

I also do alot of winrar extracting and also par repairing of the winrar associated files. I currently have a amd64 cpu and only 1 gig of memory, would it be better to increase my ram or my processor, I'm on a tight budget so I can't really upgrade both.

 

[techfuzz]

Originally posted by: Gl4di4tor
I also do alot of winrar extracting and also par repairing of the winrar associated files. I currently have a amd64 cpu and only 1 gig of memory, would it be better to increase my ram or my processor, I'm on a tight budget so I can't really upgrade both.

Processor definitely. I myself just upgraded from a 3000+ to an X2 4600+ and both par and winrar run at lightning speed now.

techfuzz

 

[Gl4di4tor]

Originally posted by: techfuzz

Originally posted by: Gl4di4tor
I also do alot of winrar extracting and also par repairing of the winrar associated files. I currently have a amd64 cpu and only 1 gig of memory, would it be better to increase my ram or my processor, I'm on a tight budget so I can't really upgrade both.

Processor definitely. I myself just upgraded from a 3000+ to an X2 4600+ and both par and winrar run at lightning speed now.

techfuzz

really. interesting. man, I would love to do that. How much would you estimate a upgrade like that would run a fella.

edit:
lowest price for a x2 4600 is $247.00

 

[techfuzz]

Originally posted by: Gl4di4tor
really. interesting. man, I would love to do that. How much would you estimate a upgrade like that would run a fella.

edit:
lowest price for a x2 4600 is $247.00

Yup, I paid $269 because I bought it the day after the price drop a few weeks ago. Best deal now is probably that $247 you found.

techfuzz

 

[savvy]

Dual Core Processor.

 

[Gl4di4tor]

Originally posted by: techfuzz

Originally posted by: Gl4di4tor
really. interesting. man, I would love to do that. How much would you estimate a upgrade like that would run a fella.

edit:
lowest price for a x2 4600 is $247.00

Yup, I paid $269 because I bought it the day after the price drop a few weeks ago. Best deal now is probably that $247 you found.

techfuzz

Did you do any other mandatory upgrades and how much did it run you, such as motherboard and memory upgrade because of the new cpu?

 

[DrBlink]

sigh.. so much beating around the bush. The issue with winrar / quickpar (for those who use it) will also be the harddrive bottlenecking it. Want to unrar faster, use raid0, only when compressing will a good cpu really help. But as always the slowest thing inside the PC for many years now is the harddrive. I upg from 2500 athlon xp / 1gb ram to dual core opt 170 / 2gb ram expecting winrar to go faster. It was originally taking me 7-12 minutes to unrar a dvd on the old rig. After the upgrade to DC and more ram, still similar times. Got raid0 and then I truly saw it shine. 3-4 minutes per dvd unrar. BTW raid0's performance is hard to find elsewhere, it wont make things super fast, windows loads in the same time as before (maybe barely faster, never noticed a real difference) But when working on huge consistant files like a rar file or quickpar, you can really see the performance of raid0.