WinRAR is a powerful compression tool with many integrated additional functions to help you organize your compressed archives. WinRAR puts you ahead of the crowd when it comes to compression. By consistently creating smaller archives, WinRAR is often faster than the competition. We're taking a look at the the features, performance, and compression rates of four file archiving and compression tools: the free and open source 7-Zip, the heavyweight WinRAR, the old-school. That's a clear win for 7-zip and Windows native software because they all are free. Winrar starting price is about as much as Winzip, but there's one big difference between them: Winzip doesn't allow you to use it beyond the trial period unless you buy a license and Winrar will only start to display a 'Trial period is over' kind of warning.
There was again one of those 'must have programs' post somewhere. And as usual people argued a bit about using either WinRAR or 7-Zip.
There is this benchmark but it is many years old already.
Winzip Vs Winrar Comparison Tool
I decided to do quick tests to see if updates to these programs have changed anything.
I compressed a folder and timed the compression time. The folder contained 328 files (mostly pdf but some other too). Original size was 156 MB.
sytem:
OS: Win 10
CPU: AMD Phenom II x4 955
RAM: 4 GB
HDD: WD Blue 7200 rpm
This hardware is weaker than hwat they used on that tom's hardware test... But we'll see how it goes.
7-Zip compressed to 7z. WinRAR compressed to rar file. Only compression quality was changed, all other settings were at their defaults in all tests.
Winzip Vs Winrar
Results: http://i.imgur.com/stjsGD3.png (ordered from fastest to slowest)
The results are quite similar to the older results.
7-Zip fastest is faster than WinRar fastest but has lower compression.
7-Zip fast takes about same time as WinRar fast but compress slightly more than any WinRar setting.
7-Zip normal is a bit slower than any WinRAR setting but also compresses more.
7-Zip maximum and ultra take long time for slightly smaller file. Those two were actually identical. CPU usage in hese two was odd. All the lower quality settings reached 100% on all cores but these two didn't go above 45%.
Winrar
I also timed decompression. There wasn't much difference between the two programs.
Decompressing 7z files took 6.5-7.7 seconds, higher compression decompressed faster.
Decompressing rar files took 2.7-3.5 seconds, higher compression decompressed faster.
I guess HDD can't feed data to CPU fast enough and reading smaller more compressed file is faster, except 7z files were much slower to open.
Winzip Vs 7 Zip
Want to test this yourself? Just use powershell and run command Measure-Command { & 'c:Program Files7-Zip7z.exe' a [output] [inputs] -mx=[quality] | Out-Default } for 7-Zip and Measure-Command { & 'c:Program FilesWinRARRar.exe' a -m[quality] [output] [inputs] | Out-Default } for WinRAR. The powershell will tell how long it took.
TL;DR
7-Zip is fastest to compress when aiming to speed. But trades some compression for speed.
7-Zip makes slightly smaller file than WinRAR in slightly shorter time.
With more time 7-Zip makes even smaller files.
Decompressing rar files is faster with both programs though.