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list thousands of files benchmark


Open large archives benchmark


fastest archive opener app
time to open large zip file

COMPRESSION BENCHMARK
MAXIMUM COMPRESSION
FASTEST COMPRESSION
BROTLI VS ZSTANDARD

LARGE ARCHIVES


Goals

Evaluate GUI frontend responsiveness under heavy workload.

Compare mainstream archive manager apps, on multiple Operating Systems, in terms of times needed to open archives containing a very large number of files and folders (in the range of several thousands).

Identify factors that may influence archive browsing performances when listing thousands of items.


Software settings

  • Windows 10 64 bit using 64 bit versions of:
    • 7-Zip 25.00
    • PeaZip 10.6.0
    • WinRar 7.11
    • WinZip 76.9
    • Windows 10 built-in Compressed Folders
  • Ubuntu Linux 22.04 LTS x86_64
    • PeaZip for Linux GTK2 10.6.0
    • PeaZip for Linux Qt6 10.6.0
    • Gnome Archive Manager
  • macOS 15.5
    • PeaZip for macOS aarch64 10.6.0
    • PeaZip for macOS x86_64 10.6.0
  • Asahi Linux on aarch64
    • PeaZip for Linux GTK2 aarch64 10.6.0
All applications are tested using default, out-of-the-box configuration unless specified otherwise.
 

Hardware settings


Windows: Notebook with Intel Core i7-8565U CPU, 4 physical cores with hyper-threading (8 logical cores), 8 GB RAM
System disk 512 GB PCIe NVMe SSD, NTFS filesystem.
7-Zip benchmark score 23500

Linux: virtual machine over previous hardware.
7-Zip benchmark score 8500

macOS: 2020 MacBook Air with M1 chip.
7-Zip benchmark score 46000
This machine runs both macOS and Asahi Linux aarch64 benchmarks

Since very different technologies are employed, 7-Zip benchmark score is provided as reference, albeit it is mainly correlated with CPU performances.
The reference machines can be consider entry level systems due to limted specs for today's standards.
 
Input data

Subject of the benchmark are 3 archives in ZIP format, default compression level, no encryption, containing several small files of mixed types - in the range of 10s of thousands and 100s of thousands items.

As content for the ZIP archives it was provided, multiple times, a directory containing:
1x PeaZip source package
3x PeaZip translations package
totaling about 1000 items, approximately 93% files and 7% directories.

Archive "25K" contains 25 K items, 225 MB in size
Archive "250K" contains 250 K items, 2.25 GB in size
Archive "25-flat" contains 25 K items, all of them in the root of the archive, 225 MB in size

Open large archive test results



Benchmark methods

Benchmark input archives are saved in a fast SSD system disk, and opened by the tested applications - which are already started.
A median time in seconds over 5 tests is reported as time to open the archive for browsing.
Since the tests are conducted on different machines for Windows, Linux, and macOS systems, 7-Zip benchmark score for each system (rounded) is reported for reference in "Hardware settings" paragraph.

Caveats
  • Archives are purposely tested on a fast local SSD drive to put the focus of the benchmark on the efficiency of the tested utilities: a slow disk or, worse, a remote disk over a slow connection, will degrade the performances of all applications, adding overhead time to access the data, the overhead being correlated with the size of the archive and the speed of the unit.
  • External factors may alter the outcome of the test, i.e. the system could theoretically delay or stop content listing operations detecting high CPU / memory usage, or high temperature, or an anti-malware software may interfere with the operations,

Benchmark listing times results (the lower the better)


25K
250K
25K-flat
PeaZip WIN64
0.8
3.5 1.6
PeaZip WIN64 (Fast mode)
0.3
1.0
1.2
7-Zip
0.3
0.8
0.6
WinRar
0.7
4.1
1.8
WinZip
5.4
43.0
4.1
MS Compressed Folders
1.2
750.0 3.7
PeaZip for Linux GTK2
0.9
3.1
9.3
PeaZip for Linux Qt6
0.8
3.2
2.1
Gnome Archive Manager
0.9
5.0
1.4
PeaZip for macOS aarch64
0.4
2.3
1.2
PeaZip for macOS x86_64
0.8
3.2
1.6
PeaZip for Linux GTK2 aarch64 0,6
2,1
4,3

Time in seconds (lower better) to complete each benchmark.



Performances opening archives containing an increasingly large number of items

While up to a few thousands items per archive the time needed to open the archive is barely noticeable, for any of the tested apps on a modern machine, with the 25K items and 250K items benchmarks it become evident how well each application scales in efficiency for listing an increasingly larger number of items, in the range of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands files (and folders) in archive.

At 25K items only WinZip takes a noticeable delay, resulting the slowest app in this test.

At 250K items all applications takes a significant performance hit, with opposite extremes being 7-Zip completing the 250K items test in one second and MS Compressed Folders completing the same test in over 12 minutes.

With out-of-the-box configuration (default Normal mode), PeaZip shows a performances profile similar or slightly better than WinRar and Gnome Archive Manager, but it is slower than 7-Zip which is the fastest tested application.

Once set in Fast mode, PeaZip becomes significantly faster than WinRar and Gnome Archive Manager, and almost as fast as 7-Zip, which is still the fastes app tested.

fastest app to open large archives



Pre-parsing analysis of archive content with PeaZip

PeaZip performs a comprehensive pre-parsing analysis of the archive content on opening, listing the entire archive content (not only the root level), which clearly adds a penalty in terms of raw performances.
As tradeoff, this step is meant:
  1. to warn the user of possible archive content integrity issues in advance of starting any operation on archived data
  2. to reconcile inconsistencies, omissions, and errors / corruption in archive's TOC in order to be able to create an usable representation of the content for the file browser (and additionally a treeview representation of the structure of directories inside the archive)
  3. to display comprehensive stats about the archive content (size, numberof files, folders, compression ratio, content of each single directory in archive...)
PeaZip can automatically turn off parts of pre-parsing process in order to preserve performances, and can completely skip pre-browsing: this behavior can be set in Options > Settings, Browser optimization in the Performance group.
By default PeaZip is set in Normal mode, which pre-parses archives in the range of 256 K items, while Fast mode has pre-parsing turned off unless listing issues are auto-detected while opening the archive.
While Fast mode is definitely faster (and most of the possible issues are auto-detected anyway), it is not the default mode, as thoroughly checking data integrity is a foremost priority for PeaZip project.


Performances rendering a large number of items in the archive browser

25K-flat test shows mainly the efficiency in displaying a large number of items at once in the file / archive manager component, i.e. a folder or a search filter containing many thousands files.

In this test the key advantage is the implementation of a virtual list view, which was implemeted in PeaZip 10.6.0, improving performances to levels comparable to or better than fast apps like WinRar and Gnome Archive Manager.

Virtual list view efficiency depends on the widgtset, with PeaZip 10.6.0 showing over 6x performances enhancements on Windows compared to previous releases, over 30x on macOS (Cocoa is the slowest widgetset in non-virtual mode), nearly 2x on Qt6 (fastest widgetset in non-virtual mode), while with GTK2 widgetset there are few benefits.


Virtual
Non-virtual
PeaZip Win64
1.6
9.9
PeaZip (Fast mode) 1.2
9.4
PeaZip GTK2 11.9
9.3
PeaZip Qt6 2.1
3.2
PeaZip aarch64 1.2
36.0
PeaZip x86_64 1.6
59.0
PeaZip aarch64 Linux GTK2 3.4
4.3

Time in seconds to compete the 25K-flat test (lower better) on different widgetsets.

In bold the time with out-of-the-box settings of PeaZip; Virtual mode can be set from Option > Settings, Performances group.

speed listing thousands of files in archive



Conclusions: what is the fastest app for browsing archives?



Fastest application to browse large archives
7-Zip is the fastest application to open / browse large archives in all tests.
Out-of-the-box, PeaZip is comparable or better than fast apps like WinRar and Gnome Archive Manager, and can be made nearly as fast as 7-Zip using the Fast mode setting.

Performances comparison of integrated system utilities
As for system utilities, Gnome Archive Manager clearly surpasses MS Compressed Folders in efficiency, and it has comparable performances with PeaZip for Linux, even if it is significantly slower on 250K items test (very large archives).

Performances on different widgetset
As expected. displaying many thousands of items at once is the task in which PeaZip is most influenced by the choice of a specific widgetset, either with list view in virtual and in non-virtual mode.
Qt6 is the fastest widgetset in non-virtual mode, while Cocoa is the slowest.
Virtual mode brings to all widgetsets a great performances boost, except for GTK2.

Performances on Apple Silicon vs Intel
On an M1 Apple Silicon machine, the native macOS aarch64 build consistently performed better than the x86_64 build, ranging from 30% to 50% faster performances.

macOS vs Asahi Linux on Apple Silicon

Performances in 25K items and 250K items benchmarks are quite similar (the latter test showing an advantage for Asahi Linux over macOS), while the 25K-flat test shows an advantage for macOS over Asahi due the outdated GTK2 widgetset which PeaZip uses on the latter OS.
In non-virtual mode, however, the GTK2 widgetset is significantly faster than Cocoa, completing the 25K-flat test in 4.3 seconds vs over half a minute.

Synopsis: Open large archives benchmark. What is the fastest application to open large archives? Comparison of archive browsing speed with 7-Zip, PeaZip, and WinRar. Archive listing benchmark methods, time to open results, comparative of speed of archive manager utilities for browsing archives containing thousands of files and folders. Speed test on Windows, Linux, and macOS aarch64 and Intel.

Topics: PeaZip vs 7-Zip vs WinRar list large archive content benchmark, which is the fastest application

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