7zip has been our preferred compression utilty since we began to host drivers.
Starting out in its infancy and now drivers are uploaded after first being compressed with v9.30
TomsHardware who, I've ad dealings with even before 7zip was on the scene has given 7zip their Elite award, a well deserved title for a much used app we use daily.
For the whole write up with performance comparisons head on over to Tomshardware
7-Zip is the clear performance winner of our file archiving and compression tools round-up. It sets the standard for both compression ratio and time with its very own 7z compression format. It manages to beat MagicRAR, WinRAR, and WinZip for the best compression ratio, even with its Fastest Compression setting enabled. 7-Zip is also a lot faster than the competition if the LZMA2 algorithm is used. It took 7-Zip only 25 seconds to compress our benchmark files and folders with Hyper-Threading enabled. Meanwhile, WinRAR took 44 seconds, WinZip 51 seconds, and MagicRAR an arduous 159 seconds.Although we don't often dust off awards for software, due to its superior performance in both speed and compression, and a price tag that just can't be beat, we're awarding 7-Zip the coveted Tom's Hardware Elite award.