Since Version 3.60, WinRAR is opimized for multi-processor systems.
Multithreaded version of RAR compression algorithm improvesthe compression speed on computers with several CPU, dual core CPU and processors with hyperthreading technology.
Multithreading is enabled by default, but you can disable it in "General" part of "Settings" dialog.
In the command line mode you can control multithreading with -mt switch. This switch is available in Windows version only.
It doesn't copy it all to ram, it copies it to a temp folder iirc
Yes but it works. WinRAR have taken a techical decision which gives the best compromise between performance and reliability.Isn't that incredibly inefficient though? It means reading and writing at the same time which significantly reduces throughput.
and surely unless you have over 6 gb of free ram,then the swap file would be needed anyway for a 5.2gb archive....probably 12 gig thinking about it...