File Compression & Encryption:

Website: WinRAR

Our file compression and decompression tests were split into two halves to cover a broad spectrum of performance. The first test we ran was to compress and encrypt a 176MB MPEG-2 source file with the highest quality compression ratio. Secondly, we compressed and encrypted the folder of 400 photographs with the same compression settings.



Here we see MSI suffering quite badly from the lack of memory bandwidth – in large file compression particularly it manages to drop six seconds on average, putting both MSI P35 and P45 boards at the bottom of the pile. The difference in small file compression is smaller, but the result is pretty much the same. While a couple of seconds doesn't mean too much, six seconds almost makes a noticeable difference if you're waiting on something to finish – and this test is less than two minutes long.

File Decompression & Decryption:

The two RAR archives created during the compression and encryption tests were then decompressed and decrypted.



Large file decompression fares pretty well as the MSI P45 Platinum drops in a fraction ahead of the Asus P45 board, but it's roughly the same amount slower than the Gigabyte P45 board. Small file compression, on the other hand, falls back compared to the other boards, as the MSI sits in the lower half of our performance table.