Fast compression: faster than fastest ZIP comparative (2024)

Goals Analyzemodern compression algorithms capable to provide performances equal orbetter than fastest commonly available implementation of classicDeflate algorithms, employed in obiquitous ZIP format. Comparison is conducted, in terms of compression / extraction speed andcompression ratio, against performances of Deflate ZIP in the rangefrom default to fastest compression settings. Softwaresettings Benchmarksare conductedon Windows 10 2009 64 bit using 64 bit versions of: PeaZip 7.4.1 WinRar 5.8 All applications are tested using default,out-of-the-box compression settings for the selected archive format. No cryptography option is set, since encryption impact on performancesis out of the scope ofthis benchmark. Hardwaresettings Notebook with Intel Core i7-8565U CPU, 4physical cores with hyper-threading (8 logical cores), 8 GB RAM System disk 512 GB PCIe NVMe SSD, NTFS filesystem

Compressionformats compared in this benchmark 7Z fileformatOpen Source archive formatby 7-Zip, providing strong and efficient compression and goodperformances on multicore machines, tested with: LZMA2 algorithm(strong compressor), set at fastest compression level Brotli algorithm (fastcompressor), set at default compressionlevel Zstandard algorithm (fast compressor), set at defaultcompressionlevel RAR fileformat(RarLabs RAR5 revision) proprietary archive format providingbettercompression that ZIP using PPMd algorithm, testedat fastest compression level ZIP fileformatwidely used archive format, tested at default and fastest compressionlevels (withDeflate algorithm) fromWinRar, which qualified as the fastest zip compressor in previous batchof PeaZip's compressionbenchmarks Input data Same set of data of previous "Brotli vs Zstandard" benchmark is used:input contains 43 files in 4 directories for total 1.22 GB(1,318,000,857 bytes), composed by well known reference filesrepresentative of different data structures, widely used forcompressionbenchmarks: CalgaryandCanterbury compression corpora enwik8 and enwik9 Silesiacompression corpus

Compression/ decompression comparison with fastest ZIP

Faster than zipcompressionbenchmark methods

Benchmarkinput data is saved to system disk (PCIe SSD) and compressed to systemdisk, same partition, separate directory; the resulting archives arethen extracted toseparate directory on same (system) disk/partition.

Each compression and extraction test is repeated 10 times to get anaverage value; size is expressed in MB, time in seconds.
For each tested format, alhgorithm, and compression level, are useddefault compression settings aspre-set out of the box by the file archiver applications being tested(PeaZip, andWinRar).

WinRar is chosen as reference for the fastest commonly available ZIPDeflate implementation, due results of previous benchark tests.
Performance of ZIP Deflate is analized at normal and fastestcompression levels, and compared with non-Deflate algorithms atcompression levels which provides comparable compression ratio andspeed results.

Faster than zipcompressionbenchmark resultstable, the lower the better for all columns

Utility, format, algorithm, level	Compression(sec)	Archivesize (MB)	Compressionratio	Extraction (sec)
WinRar,ZIP normal	21.4	407	32.58%	8.0
WinRar,ZIP fastest	15.8	429	34.34%	7.2
WinRar,RAR PPMd fastest	12.1	391	31.30%	5.0
PeaZip,7Z LZMA2 fastest	15.7	386	30.90%	4.1
PeaZip,7Z Zstandard normal	6.5	398	31.86%	4.1
PeaZip,7Z Brotli normal	6.1	410	32.82%	2.0

Faster than zipcompressionratioresults

All alternative formats attainedbetter compression ratio results than ZIP Deflate at fastestcompression levels.
All formats (except for 7Z Brotli) attained bettercompression ratio than ZIP Delfate at normal compression level, withLZMA2 being the best compressor followed by RAR PPMd and Zstandard..

Faster than zipcompressionspeedresults

All formatscompressed the input set significantly faster thanZIP Deflate normal, and even faster than ZIP Deflate at fastestcompression level.
7Z LZMA and RAR PPMd compression times are roughly comparable with ZIPDeflateat fastest compression level (with RAR being faster), but bothalternatives providesvastly improved compression ratio.
7Z Zstandard and 7Z Brotli at normal compression level areapproximatively 3x timesfaster than ZIP Deflate at normal compression level, 2.5x times fasterthan ZIP Deflate fastest level.

Faster than zipextractionspeed results

All formatsdecompressed the benchmark data significantly faster thanZIP Deflate, either compressed at normal or fastest level.
For extraction, 7Z LZMA2 at fastest level is nearly 2x faster than ZIPDeflate, and slightly faster than RAR PPMd, reversing the performanceadvantage RAR PPMd have in compression speed test.
7Z Zstandard extraction speed at all levels overlaps with 7Z LZMA2,while 7Z Brotli provides significantly faster extraction, the fastestof the test, nearly 4x faster than ZIP Deflate range of speed.

Honorable mention:ARCformat

At minimum (1 on 9) compression level PeaZip with ARC format completedcompression test in 5.5 sec and extraction test in 2,7 sec, but createda 447 MB archive which does not fall in the desired range, being largetthan the 429 MB output created by Deflate at minimum compression level.
At 2 on 9 compression level ARC completed the compression test in 15.3sec creating a 310 MB archive, which is an excellent compression ratio,outperforming all other alternatives, but extraction needed 28.4 sec,almost 4 times slower than Deflate.
Due those drawbacks the ARC format was excluded from the test, but itremains an extremely interesting archive format.

Conclusions:faster than Deflate

While creatingDeflate-based ZIP archives remains an excellent choice due theubiquitous support from file archivers and file managers (and built-insupport in many operating systems), it is no longer the better choiceperformances-wise.
New algorithms performs better on modern architectures and scalesbetter in performances on multicore machines, providing better resultsin terms of speed, especially for extraction, and compression ratio.

What formats are fastertha ZIP on modern hardware?
With WinRar, creating a RAR (PPMd algorithm)at fastest compression level resultedin a smaller archive AND took less time.
The same holds true with PeaZip with 7Z LZMA2 at fastest compression level,withextraction being almost twice faster than Deflate and even faster thanwith RAR PPMd, a bonus that is especiallyimportant for content distribution.
Switching 7Z compression to Brotli and Zstandard algorithms, which areground up designed for high performances, provides utter speedimprovements: both algorithms at normal compression level are able tocompete with ZIP Deflate in terms of compression ratio, but completingthe benchmark at almost3 times faster compression speed.
Zstandard, whichprovides a compression ratio even better than Deflatenormal, is twice as fast for extraction than ZIP Deflate.
Brotli, whichprovides a compression ratio intermediate from Deflatenormal and Deflate fastest, is almost 4 times faster for extractionthan ZIP Deflate.

Conclusions inbrief:

1. On modern machines using RAR or 7Z format at fastestcompression level provide faster compression, and especially fasterextraction, than using traditional ZIP format - even benchmarkingthe fastest Deflate ZIP implementations and employing fastestcompression settings for Deflate.
2. While being faster, both RAR and 7Z LZMA2 at fastestcompression level also provide significantly better compression ratiothan Deflate ZIP.
3. New Brotli and Zstandard algorithms available in 7Zprovides further speed advantages over Deflate ZIP, while remainingcomparable or better in terms of compression ratio.

Learn more about how to use Brotliand Zstandard compression in 7z files, how to create RAR archives directlyfrom PeaZip GUI (providing WinRar is available on the machine), and how to create ZIP archives.

Synopsis: Fast compressionbenchmark: faster than fastest ZIP. Comparative ofWinRar and PeaZip on RAR, 7Z LZMA2, Brotli, Zstandard performances andspeed. Wht is the fastest compression format, what is the fastestcompressor, which file archiver is faster. What are algorithms fasterthan Deflate.

Topics: what are the fastestcompression and decompression algorithms, Deflate vs Brotli vsZstandard speed comparison, what are the compressors faster than zipDeflate

PeaZip > Compressionbenchmark > Fast compression: faster than fastest ZIP comparative