Benchmark Results: File Compression
This one’s all-new. Corel revamped the WinZip engine, better-optimizing it for multi-core processors (in addition to exposing support for OpenCL on AMD GPUs, which we'll test shortly). We’re certainly not fans of a company using an open standard to lock out competition. Further, we know that AMD was instrumental in exposing this functionality, and that’s the justification given for preventing Intel or Nvidia from benefiting from it.
Nevertheless, there’s a clear improvement from Trinity compared to Llano in this integer math-dominant benchmark. The dual-core A6 suffers, as we’d expect.
Our more familiar WinRAR test also favors Trinity’s four integer cores over Llano’s quad-core configuration.
You can really look at results like these, along with WinZip’s, and see how big of a difference there is between apps that lean more heavily on integer-based code versus floating-point math. When you broaden the comparison criteria to include Intel, Trinity doesn’t look as stellar in WinRAR. However, if you’re lining it up against Llano, the speed-up is certainly measurable.
The outcome in 7-Zip is much closer, though at least the two Trinity-based APUs wind up on top (narrow though the victory may be). 7-Zip is clearly very well-threaded. Switching from the quad-core A10 and A8 to the dual-core A6 decimates performance. AMD marketing can say a lot of things about good-enough performance, but when you’re waiting an extra three or four minutes for a simple, relatively small compression workload to wrap up, there is unquestionably something to be said for owning hardware that’s better than passable.
