File Compression & Encryption:

WinRAR

Website: WinRAR

Our file compression and decompression tests were split into two halves to cover a broad spectrum of performance. The first test we ran was to compress and encrypt the MPEG-2 source file from our video encoding test with the highest quality compression ratio. Secondly, we compressed and encrypted the folder of 400 photographs used in our Photoshop Elements test with the same compression settings.



Hitting the high notes is the overclocked Core i7 920 at 4GHz again with a convincing lead at the top of the table. The overclocked DDR3 E8400 and Q6600 still perform very high and outperform their DDR2 scores by a positive margin that increases their value as CPUs in both small and large file compression.

The Core i7s again hit a good 20-30 percent relative positive compared to the baseline, and the AMD's are also slightly positive here in small file compression, although for the first time the Black Editions are actually lower value in large file compression.

Again the Core 2's sit in the negative values - offering a sub-par gain in performance compared to what Intel is charging for them.



In total platform cost the overclocked Core i7 920 is still top dog by a strong margin to the rest of the pack, although all the Core i7's are just below this making up the top four or five in both cases. Only the E8400 with DDR2 overclocked to 4GHz in the small file compression test splits the pack, although the E8400 and DDR2 are inexpensive products so the Core i7 performance alone will still be higher overall.

The AMD's also provide reasonable cost benefits here - the overclocked Phenom X4 9850 is a pretty good 10-15 percent relative positive and the rest of the Core 2's generally fritter down the table into a negative price : performance value in both tests.