Compress program files?

Energize · 12 Jul 2007 at 19:30

Is there anyway to compress program files so they take up less space, but still be able to use them normally?

brendy · 12 Jul 2007 at 19:42

Yes windows can compress folders but it will slow down their performance as they need to be uncompressed each time you open them.

Energize · 12 Jul 2007 at 20:16

From what I've been told, game loading times are bottlenecked by the hdd, so increasing compression wouldn't affect performance, so I'm not worried about that.

What sort of compression do game developers use for fitting their games to a dvd? Because even winrar shrinks install sizes by 50% using the fastest setting.

brendy · 12 Jul 2007 at 20:24

Its very dependant on a file by file basis, some files are already well compressed by their nature (bit like jpgs etc) others can be squashed flat like basic documents.

oddjob62 · 12 Jul 2007 at 20:26

Energize said:
From what I've been told, game loading times are bottlenecked by the hdd, so increasing compression wouldn't affect performance, so I'm not worried about that.

Each file will have to be decompressed before being loaded into memory, so it will affect performance.

Energize · 12 Jul 2007 at 20:28

oddjob62 said:
Each file will have to be decompressed before being loaded into memory, so it will affect performance.

But as long as the cpu can decompress at the hdds transfer rate of 60MB/s then it will be as if they are not compressed at all.

marc2003 · 12 Jul 2007 at 20:30

try it and see how you get on?

brendy · 12 Jul 2007 at 20:37

Energize said:
But as long as the cpu can decompress at the hdds transfer rate of 60MB/s then it will be as if they are not compressed at all.

As long as its not trying to process windows routines and anything else also loaded into memory, it seriosuly will run slower, why would windows xp or vista be running uncompressed if it was equally as fast compressed?

Energize · 12 Jul 2007 at 20:41

brendy said:
why would windows xp or vista be running uncompressed if it was equally as fast compressed?

First thing that comes to mind is the time it would take to compress the files, or people with slow cpus wouldn't be able to stay ahead of the hdd when decompressing files. Lots of game files are already compressed, audio and video for example, yet the performance of playback is not affected, as the cpu can decode files faster than the hdd supplies them.