Benchmark Results: File Compression

Recently adopting WinZip 16 doesn’t seem to have helped with the software’s inability to utilize multi-core processors effectively. As such, Ivy Bridge’s slight IPC advantage garners it another top finish, just ahead of the Core i7-3960X and -2700K. Fortunately, we have inside information that indicates WinZip’s next incarnation will be more competitive.

More aggressive optimizations for parallelism give Intel’s Core i7-3960X an edge in WinRAR, allowing it to reclaim the top spot, though the quad-core Ivy Bridge chip does manage to tie the £440 Core i7-3930K.

Let’s not mince words, though. Core i7-2700K is just one second behind the new chip, and the £170 Core i5-2550K is just two seconds back. You certainly won’t have much to complain about if saving some money is more important than waiting a couple of extra seconds for a folder full of files to compress.

Long known as the file compression/decompression utility in our suite best optimized for multi-core processors, 7-Zip puts both Sandy Bridge-E based CPUs in the lead, followed closely by Core i7-3770K.

The real loser here is Core i5, which sports four cores, but lacks Hyper-Threading, landing it in last place. AMD’s Bulldozer-based FX-8150 fares better in the face of more aggressive threading, though it can’t quite catch the Core i7-2700K.