mtdev

The test results do not represent real life use of the tools, there was almost nothing else running when performing the tests.

The utilities used are: WinRAR 2.90 beta 4, Power Archiver 2001 7.02.08, WinAce 2.04, WinZip 8.01 beta and PKZIP 4.50.

The test comprises of two parts with different things being compressed, first some binaries and media files i.e. low compressable stuff to test mainly the speed of compression and then to test the maximum compression ratio text files (The PHP manual in HTML format). For the first test I used 362 files in 30 directories with a total size of 22.0MB and for the second one 2259 files a total of 7.74MB.

Supported compression types (this is the official information that comes with the products):

WinRAR 2.90 beta 4
read: rar, zip, cab, arj, lzh, ace, tar, gzip, uue, bz2, jar
write: rar, zip

Power Archiver 2001 7.02.08
read: zip, rar, cab, lzh(+lha), ace, arj, jar, arc, zoo, bh(BlakHole), tar, gzip, bzip2, uue, xxe
write: zip, cab, tar, gzip, bzip2, lha, bh

WinZip 8.10 beta
read: arc, arj, b64, bhx, cab, gz, hqx, lzh, mim, tar, tgz, taz, tz, uu, uue, xxe, z
write: zip

WinAce 2.04
read: ace, zip, arj, lha, rar, ms-cabinet, arc, gzip, tar, javasoft, gzipped tar ball
write: ace, lha, zip, ms-cabinet

PKZIP 4.50
read: zip
write: zip

Notes:
Time is expressed in seconds, size in megabytes if not otherwise stated (that's 2^20 bytes).
The time column shows the time required for compressing the files and the additional RAR, Power, Ace, Zip and PK present the time for decompression by the specific utility (WinRAR, Power Archiver, WinAce, WinZip and PKZIP respectively) also in seconds.
n/a means that the utility does not support the compression type at all or I was not able to uncompress the archive (for the company's lawyers, especially WinRAR as it is stated to extract bzip2 archives).
n/t means that I did not find it useful to test the time reqired for the utility to decompress the archive.
? means either that the time is not stable or some other problem occurred.
WinRAR the + sign in the decompression times means that you have to first decompress the archive and then untar it (the smaller amount is for the untar procedure).
WinAce the + sign means that you have to wait the smallet amount of time for it to begin decompression (and also to start its timer).
WinZip [+5] appoximately 5 seconds are reqiured to click on I agree (evaluation version only) and the beta out of date warning.

The second test follows (compressing the PHP manual, HTML) first the Linux utilities and then the Windows which are really far behind.

And finally the second test for the Windows utilities, WinZip and PKZIP haven't been tested because this should have been a waste of time.

Notes:
Power Archiver for compression different than zip a time of 56 seconds is requered by the program to inform you that it is doing some kind of caching files or sorting them (just suppose).

Summary:

Fastest windows archiver: WinRAR

Best windows archiver: PowerArchiver, this is an excellent choice if you have Linux or you have to manage gzipped or bzipped archives.

For all the tests I've used an AMD K6-3D Now at 300MHz with 256MB RAM and a Quantum EX 3.2 GB hard disk, the Windows version is 98 SE and Linux Mandrake 8.1 with a 2.4.8 stock kernel (I'm not quite sure if a specifically precompiled should perform better).