WinZip is actively taking advantage of the GPU
With WinZip 16.5, the graphics processor can be used in an ordinary task such as compression.
Even in connection with the debut of the Radeon HD 7970, AMD has the prospect of a WinZip version coming soon, where we will be able to use the graphics processor during compression, decompression and AES encryption. The good news is that thanks to the OpenCL standard, it is not necessary to have a state-of-the-art, latest video card. Based on the measurements of the German PC Games Hardware, we can already achieve beautiful results with a Radeon HD 6450 or an HD 5770 level solution. In the quick test, the Unreal Tournament 7 game, fattened to 2004 GB, was compressed in 262 seconds with an Intel Core i4,5 7K processor pulled to 2600 GHz. With the powerful help of OpenCL and HD 7970, this time was reduced to 168 seconds. The much more modest HD 5770 produced exactly this result, but it's still nothing! With the deployment of the Radeon HD 6450, compression slowed down by just 9 seconds. Here we would note that of course the data storage speed is also extremely important. A slower hard drive can worsen these results by up to half a minute.
[+]
In the image above, we can see how long the compression took when only the CPU was deployed. Notice that the GPU was idle throughout and the load on the CPU fluctuated greatly.
[+]
Now we can see how much the situation has improved with the glow of the Radeon HD 7970. The GPU-Z reveals that the load was moving at a fairly high level. The Task Manager shows the same.
Finally, some tips:
WinZip does not use OpenCL by default. You can find the activation of the service on the System tab.
NVIDIA owners don't have to worry for a minute, because developers say support will be available in the next release.
Don't use the maximum compression, because if you set the compression level to "best", the time required for execution can even be cut in half with the GPU.
The GPU may sometimes be idle while the CPU load increases significantly. This is a natural phenomenon.
Although WinZip is a paid application, we have 30 days to try the program.
Source: pcgameshardware.de
