Modern PC games (like Starfield or Cyberpunk 2077) rely on archive files. If you are a modder repacking assets, LZMA compression takes ages. LZ4 allows for rapid iteration—compress, test, delete, repeat.

| Feature | LZMA (Standard 7-Zip) | LZ4 (Modded 7-Zip) | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | Compression Ratio | Very High (10/10) | Low to Medium (3/10) | | Compression Speed | 10-20 MB/s | 500-800 MB/s | | Decompression Speed | 50-100 MB/s | 1,500-3,000 MB/s | | CPU Usage | High (Multi-threaded, but heavy) | Very Low | | Use Case | Long-term storage, Distribution | Real-time backups, Gaming, Logging |

The Golden Rule: Use LZ4 when you need to zip/unzip instantly. Use LZMA when storage space is expensive.

Simply right-click the .lz4 file and choose "Extract Here" or "Extract to [Folder]". 7-Zip ZS handles this natively.