Greetings again everyone, so I just finished RAZOR compressor results, but I also threw in zpaq on -m4 and -m5 settings for comparison. I always had certain sympathy for zpaq and its family compressors, but I never fount it worth the time wasted. There is a significant difference in ratio(and of course, time) between -m4 vs -m5 but on that later. So lets start.
RAZOR Compressor: 264.55mb That is 2.95% or:
3% better ratio(vs 272.59mb FA -m5)
3% is like, around ~2gb better savings on 60gb game. Sure 2gb less is nice but in the grand scheme of such big data... not really. Or rather,
it would be if it wasnt for...
time:
FA -m5: 41s
razor: 10min(pffff)
Thats almost 15x slower, so if you compress 60gb game(and remember with precompressing it will actually be around 90+gb), if FA -m5 took ~2h which is typical, you are going to need around 30h(more than full day) with razor. Now, since razor is not multithreaded(used about 33% on 4 core cpu so like 1 1/2), maybe if you 4x4 bind it on FA if possible then that is more reasonable. In that case you could probably get around ~8h - still 4x slower but at least more reasonable, you could let this over night and be fine next morning.
At this point its up to your own judgment if 3% is worth it. For me its not but if other type of data can get better ratio
AND if you can 4x4 it(which I am almost sure you cant yet), then maybe. I think its not possible to 4x4 it because razor only work on files not stdin/out and i think thats needed for 4x4. Again, if somebody know better please let me know.
Now to Zpaq:
zpaq -m4: 284.51mb = sucks, 4x slower and worse than old FA -m5 lzma lol,
but
zpaq -m5: 246.81mb
Thats
~10% better vs FA -m5! Now we are talking, not with those single digit garbage differences! And hell even that is for my spoiled brain not much but at least 2 digits difference! For this particular file, zpaq -m5 beat razor compressor but keep in mind this:
- zpaq already utilized all 4 cores so no more speedup and...
- it took 12min and...
- it will take same amount of time to decompress, which mean you decide today to play 60gb game you will play it tomorrow at soonest = no thanks
Conclusion from this:
Zpaq is out of game despite being best winner with visibly better ratio margin(for this particular file), no need to talk about paq family in general anymore.
FreeArc -m5 is still the best overall, the only potential replacement worth bragging about could be razor compressor, but not in current state if you cannot 4x4 it. And if you can, let me know but even then its a question of whether ~3[-5?]% gain is worth 4x more compression time. For current single threaded 15x s-l-o-w-n-e-s-s certainly not - not to me at least.
TL;DR:
Keep using FreeArc -m5 with srep64+ztool and stop wasting your time. You have life to live.
Thats it.
And so I am done for now. Take this thread for what you will, I hope it was somewhat helpful to you guys despite its limitations. Do feel free to continue discussion though, one never know what can be discovered down the road ^_^.