ZIP Format: Compression Rate And Size
Now we repeat the same tests, only this time with the conventional ZIP format. This is important, since many users may depend on ZIP for compatibility reasons and because of the fact that every user with at least a little technical expertise knows what a ZIP file is. We could not use FreeArc, as it doesn’t support ZIP compression.
In this case, the target file size is already much larger than when we used the proprietary formats. In addition, the differences between the smallest and the largest package are much smaller. 7-Zip does extremely well, and it doesn’t made much difference whether we use default or best compression. WinZip 14 at best compression achieved great results as well.
This diagram shows the file size reduction possible with the settings we use.
The second chart again shows target file size relative to the source file.
These results are amazing. Apparently, 7-Zip achieves its result in one-eighth of the time required by the same application in best compression mode. WinZip and WinRAR fall in the middle. Now let’s look at the performance summaries, which take compression rates and processing time into account.
Latest Software News
- 10/02 – Hacker Says He Compromised Intel, Gained Private Info
- 10/02 – Microsoft Details Windows on ARM, Desktop Apps Support
- 10/02 – Diablo 3 Won't Be Anywhere in Sight Until at Least Q2 2012
- 10/02 – Microsoft Promises "Fair and Reasonable" Patent...
- 09/02 – Loads of Skyrim Mods Already on Steam Workshop
Latest Software reviews
- 17/01 – In Pictures: Dear Developers, 15 Games Worthy Of A Sequel
- 09/01 – Nokia Lumia 710 Review: Windows Phone 7 On A Budget
- 06/01 – Web Browser Grand Prix VIII: Chrome 16, Firefox 9, And Mac OS X
- 06/12 – Star Wars: The Old Republic: PC Performance, Benchmarked
- 11/11 – Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: PC Performance, Benchmarked
Aw no you didn't test PK-ZIP!!
I have used 7-Zip for a while, hats of to the Developers
Bloody hell! PK-zip! not used that in over 10 years!
Great article. Always used WinRAR and never really took 7-Zip seriously, but may now!
Can't remember why I started using 7zip, but I certainly won't be changing any time soon!
Thanks for a nice article. One potentially important aspect of archiving does not seem to be mentioned, and it would be really useful to see it considered. This is the archive format: solid or non-solid.
By default 7-Zip uses solid compression, which gives it an advantage in compression ratios, particularly when compressing lots of relatively small files. Conversely, WinRAR use non-solid compression by default, which provides a significant performance advantage if you want access specific files within the archive rather than only extracting the complete archive.
Would it be possible to use GPU's for this kind of task?
In terms of which compression program I use, I prefer WinRAR. I often work with huge video files and a limited amount of disk space, so what I do is RAR the files to a smaller size (some compress really well), so that they can be batch processed them at a later date (transcoded from uncompressed AVI to Divx). I find WinRAR fast and flexible; it's cool being able to alter the priority and compression profile on-the-fly.
As a Linux user I use the default compression tool which happens to be 7-Zip.
So 7zip is the best? we already knew that! why did you even bother with winzip? were not running 98SE here, .zip file functionality has been native to windows for almost a decade making winzip about as useful as the pkzip.exe it replaced
I've been using winrar since early 90s. It was always much better than zip though arc was nice for executables. Never bothered to look for others. But 7zip really impressed since the difference in compression is marginal whether best compression or default is used while time compressing is very impressive. Its important though to test that theory about using solid archives. I've always avoid solid archives because they're harder to recover from errors and you can't access individual files.
What about windows built in zip folder thingy
7zip is really good, but i use IZArc (yeah, i kno, uve never heard of it) simply because its tiny and ive never had a file type it couldnt open. People are always sending me weird file types. We should have a file compatability test for the 4 compression programs just tested, see if they actually are useful at opening different compressed files.