WinRAR 4.20 gets multi-threaded support

[Magic Carpet]

My Thuban gets loaded to about ~70% on each core. Finally, it can use more than 2 threads :thumbsup:

Get here and benchmark away

This thread lived a good life, and then it passed away. Let's give it the peace it deserves
-ViRGE

 

[Tsavo]

I assume you mean Winrar 4.2?

 

[JAG87]

4.20, but thanks for the news

 

[Magic Carpet]

I assume you mean Winrar 4.2?

Sorry, I mixed up. I do

 

[JAG87]

Wow massive performance boost, went from ~1700 to ~2800 KB/s on a crappy i5 2520M 2C/4T, I imagine the improvement is greater on a 4C/8T cpu.

Well done Winrar, it's about time.

 

[Jeff7]

Wow.
Test folder:
16s on older version (don't remember which)
<5s on 4.20

i7 960@stock speed


Nice.
Welcome, WinRAR, to the wonderful world of multiple cores.


Now, Pro/Engineer?.....any time you're ready. I've got 4 Hyperthreaded cores sitting here, but you only ever use one. *sigh*

 

[Magic Carpet]

Wow massive performance boost, went from ~1700 to ~2800 KB/s on a crappy i5 2520M 2C/4T, I imagine the improvement is greater on a 4C/8T cpu.

1035T @ 3.25 Ghz.

 

[fastamdman]

FINALLY!!! I am so excited for this!

 

[ninaholic37]

Says here 7-zip also supports multi-threading:

http://www.7-zip.org/7z.html

LZMA is default and general compression method of 7z format. The main features of LZMA method:

- High compression ratio
- Variable dictionary size (up to 4 GB)
- Compressing speed: about 1 MB/s on 2 GHz CPU
- Decompressing speed: about 10-20 MB/s on 2 GHz CPU
- Small memory requirements for decompressing (depend from dictionary size)
- Small code size for decompressing: about 5 KB
- Supporting multi-threading and P4's hyper-threading

Does WinRAR support more threads?

I tried WinRAR but switched to 7-zip because it seemed less bulky and didn't have that annoying trial-period message.

 

[thescreensavers]

Nice, I went from 910 kb/s to 1,352 on my older T9300

 

[Magic Carpet]

Says here 7-zip also supports multi-threading:

http://www.7-zip.org/7z.html

Does WinRAR support more threads?

I tried WinRAR but switched to 7-zip because it seemed less bulky and didn't have that annoying trial-period message.

source file: big_buck_bunny_1080p_surround.avi | 885mb
WinRAR 4.20 Best Compression: 5:54s | 869mb
7-Zip 9.2 Ultra Compression: 1:20s | 856mb

7-Zip compressed slightly better but it took 4.x times as long. Most of the time, only 2 cores were really loaded. Even though, the built-in benchmark is multi-core aware, it can't fully utilize my processor in a real job, which is a shame (favoring the review sites rather then the actual users).

EDIT: The non-default "Bzip2 & LZMA2" compression methods will actually utilize all the 6 cores but they are much slower and thus it's pointless to use them as a benchmark. Clearly, 7-zip needs a major overhaul in speed department. Until then, I intend to use WinRAR for my archiving duties.

 

[ninaholic37]

source file: big_buck_bunny_1080p_surround.avi | 885mb
WinRAR 4.20 Best Compression: 5:54s | 869mb
7-Zip 9.2 Ultra Compression: 1:20s | 856mb

7-Zip compressed slightly better but it took 4.x times as long. Most of the time, only 2 cores were really loaded. Even though, the built-in benchmark is multi-core aware, it can't fully utilize my processor in a real job, which is a shame (favoring the review sites rather then the actual users).

Nice. Just tried zipping an mp3 folder and WinRAR was a bit faster on my 2 core/4 thread Acer as well:

Temporu.rar 1:50 185MB (WinRar 4.20 default / multi-thread)
Temporu.7z 2:32 185MB (7-zip 9.20 default)

Then I tried the same thing with an jpeg image folder, and 7z was half the size and a bit faster than WinRAR:

Bonus.rar 0:52 92.4MB (WinRar 4.20 default / multi-thread)
Bonus.7z 0:43 47.0 MB (7-zip 9.20 default)

Upon further inspection, it looks like 7-zip is smart enough to figure out that some files in one folder were duplicated in another, so it somehow linked them to the same data area. Wow

The mp3 folder didn't even work when I used the default Win7 "Send to -> Compressed (zipped) Folder" (wouldn't compress filenames with Japanese characters) so I couldn't use it's zip compressor to compare, but on the image folder it seemed to go around twice as fast as both WinRAR and 7-zip (and Bonus.zip was 92.6MB, pretty close to WinRAR). I guess a lot of this stuff depends on the file type, and other factors.

Oh well, that was fun. *uninstalls WinRAR 4.20 now*

 

[Magic Carpet]

I guess a lot of this stuff depends on the file type, and other factors.

Correct.

I like archiving almost everything on my data drive, the actual speed of compression matters to me the most. The new WinRAR seems to offer the best ratio on speed/compression at the moment and does so very convincingly.

 

[KingFatty]

Correct.

I like archiving almost everything on my data drive...

I used to zip various archived stuff, but I decided to stop doing it. why do you archive/zip your stuff?

For me, I found that my malware scanner would look inside the zip file anyway, and I had a lot of free space, so I stopped zipping it. It was more convenient to have direct access to the unzipped archive too.

 

[soccerballtux]

yall got me excited been running 4.20beta2 for a while now

 

[Makaveli]

That is a very nice leap in performance!

Winrar 4.0 64bit



Winrar 4.2 64bit

All Cores around 65-70%

 

[Rvenger]

Bulldozer will run good on Winrar now.

 

[soccerballtux]

^can someone bench that please kthx

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Cool. Benchmark comparisons with 7-zip?

 

[Magic Carpet]

^can someone bench that please kthx

I don't have it. People with FX processors need to come forward

 

[JimKiler]

So it will be faster at compression but decompression is still using a single core per the release notes:

2. RAR general decompression algorithm speed is slightly improved,
though not to same extent as RAR compression. RAR decompression
is not able to use several processor cores, so its performance
does not depend on a number of cores.

 

[Makaveli]

Cool. Benchmark comparisons with 7-zip?

I can run a 7zip compression test when I get home.

Any ideas on what you want in the compression test is a source folder with just mp3's ok?

 

[Rvenger]

^can someone bench that please kthx

I sold my FX. I don't think you want results from an A4-3400 lol

 

[MentalIlness]

Benchmarking now.

 

[Eeqmcsq]

When you guys are running these compression tests, how do you know the performance improvement isn't being helped by the files being cached in RAM from your previous test?