参考 http://pokecraft.first-world.info/wiki/Quick_Benchmark:_Gzip_vs_Bzip2_vs_LZMA_vs_XZ_vs_LZ4_vs_LZO#Compression_time
http://blog.csdn.net/zhangskd/article/details/17283875

Program	Library	ALG	Comp. Ratio	Comp. Speed	Decomp. Speed
Lz4, version r110	buit-in	Lz4 (a LZ77 variant)	Low	Very High	Very High
Lzop, version 1.02rc1	Lzo, version 2.03	Lzo (a LZ77 variant)	Low	Very High	Very High
Gzip, version 1.3.12	built-in	LZ77	Medium	Medium	High
Pigz, version 2.2.5	Zlib, version 1.2.3	LZ77	Medium	High (multithread)	High
Bzip2, version 1.0.5	Libbz2, 1.0.5	Burrows–Wheeler	High	Low	Low
Pbzip2, version 1.1.6	Libbz2, 1.0.5	Burrows–Wheeler	High	Medium (multithread)	Medium (multithread)
7-zip	built-in	LZMA	Very High	Very Low (multithread)	Medium
Xz,version 4.999.9 beta	Liblzma, ver 4.999.9beta	LZMA	Very High	Very Low	Medium
Pxz,version 4.999.9 beta	Liblzma, ver 4.999.9beta	LZMA	Very High	Medium (multithread)	Medium

LZ4 的优势在于压缩和解压速度，而不是压缩比。
Pigz 比较均衡 

原始文件为linux-3.6.10.tar，大小为467MB。

用gzip压缩后为linux-3.6.10.tar.gz，大小为101MB，压缩比为21.62%。

用bzip2压缩后为linux-3.6.10.tar.bz2，大小为79MB，压缩比为16.91%。

用lz4压缩后为linux-3.6.10.tar.lz4，大小为166MB，压缩比为35.38%。

用lz4_HC压缩后为linux-3.6.10.tar.lz4，大小为117MB，压缩比为25.03%。