14 DAY TRIAL // After the release of the first beta build for version 4.20, earlier this month, WinRAR development continues with the distribution of the second beta, which is very modest with the list of changes.
This release focuses on further improving the compression speed in multi-core environment, compared to what the first beta had to offer. Since this is the only change in the latest WinRAR build, the stable version may very well be just around the corner.
The highlights for WinRAR 4.20 include changes in RAR compression and decompression, so that both processes work faster in a multi-core environment. ZIP compression performance has also increased, as the task does better on both multi-core and single-core computers.
As a direct result of these improvements, RAM usage has increased, but not to alarming values. For instance, the memory requirement of RAR compression algorithm jumped from 40MB to 120MB.