Is this CPU usage normal ?

[H.S.]

When using winrar du unrar large files (ex. 4GB) winrar only uses around 20%
of the CPU power. Therefore a 4 GB file takes 25 hours to unrar.
Winrar is the only program running. I have installed newest bios on my Asus
P4S8X-X motherboard, newest ide driver etc. But nothing has increased the
unrar speed.

does anyone have any suggestions as to how i can make unrar use more cpu
power (and reduce unrar time) ?

Any help will be much appreciated.

PS. I hope this is the correct newsgroup ?

 

[H.S.]

I used Winzip to compress SQL database backup file (~1.2GB) - it took

under 10 min. on P-III computer.
So i should be making much better performance on my P-IV 2.4Ghz, 512 Mb RAM
....

But what should i be looking for / how can i increase performance ?

Note i am using winrar to unrar som rar files... it is not zip files.

 

[Quaoar]

When using winrar du unrar large files (ex. 4GB) winrar only uses
around 20% of the CPU power. Therefore a 4 GB file takes 25 hours to
unrar.
Winrar is the only program running. I have installed newest bios on
my Asus P4S8X-X motherboard, newest ide driver etc. But nothing has
increased the unrar speed.

does anyone have any suggestions as to how i can make unrar use more
cpu power (and reduce unrar time) ?

Any help will be much appreciated.

PS. I hope this is the correct newsgroup ?

--

There is something amiss. A 1GB rar will take only 20 or so seconds on
my P4. If you are dealing with avi files, note that rar or zip
compression is not necessary - the avi is already a compressed file, as
is a jpg file for that matter. In any event check that the HDs are set
up for DMA in device manager. If in PIO mode, it could explain the
excessive decompression time. Also, when working with these large
files, take care to keep the HD defragmented, even if defrag says it is
not necessary, and that you have suffient free HD space available. DMA,
HD fragmentation, and HD free space might be conspiring to drag the
entire decompression down to a crawl.

BTW a zip and a rar file are both similar, if not identically,
compressed.

Q

 

[H.S.]

There is something amiss. A 1GB rar will take only 20 or so seconds on
my P4. If you are dealing with avi files, note that rar or zip
compression is not necessary - the avi is already a compressed file, as
is a jpg file for that matter. In any event check that the HDs are set
up for DMA in device manager. If in PIO mode, it could explain the
excessive decompression time. Also, when working with these large
files, take care to keep the HD defragmented, even if defrag says it is
not necessary, and that you have suffient free HD space available. DMA,
HD fragmentation, and HD free space might be conspiring to drag the
entire decompression down to a crawl.

Yes something is definately wrong, but i'm really stuck in finding possible
solutions now... :-(

The files are both pictures and video compressed with rar.
HD's are set to DMA (one of the first possible solutions i tried)
HD's are regularly defragmented, so this should not be an issue.
HD's space i available i large quantities (several gigs available).

I appreciate your suggestions, and hope you or someone else can come up with
a suggestion.

 

[Dave]

What about RAM usage? If lots of VM usage and lots of swapping to disk is
happening this might be the rate limiting step. If you are running XP with
only 128MB this might be a problem.

 

[H.S.]

What about RAM usage? If lots of VM usage and lots of swapping to disk is
happening this might be the rate limiting step. If you are running XP with
only 128MB this might be a problem.

It is a 512MB, P-IV 2.4 Ghz system :-(