PDF iFilter Battle! FoxIT vs.. Adobe, 64bit version
After so long a time Adobe finally released its 64bit version of PDF iFilter!
https://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4025
“In response to customer requests, Adobe is releasing Adobe PDF iFilter 9 for 64-bit platforms, which will allow searching PDF files on Microsoft® Windows® 64-bit platforms for applications such as Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, and Microsoft SQL Server 2005.”
But, what about performance? How does it compare with FoxIT 64bit PDF iFilter?
My friend Deb Haldar did a performance test last year for their 32bit iFilters. You can find the result here: FOXIT vs.. Adobe PDF IFilter [ 32-bit only ]. Let’s say, FoxIT 32bit PDF iFilter is more than 4 times faster than the Adobe one.
Will the story change in 64bit age?
I picked about two sets of PDF files. Set I contains ~1000 PDF files, 1.7 GB in total. Set 2 contians ~2600 files, 2.4G in total. Language is mixed by 30% Chinese, 70% US English. The hardware spec is a two-way dual core XEON at 3.4GHz, 4G Ram. SharePoint was patched with October CU. Here’s the result.
| File Set | File Number | Total File Size(MB) | Avg File Size(MB) | Crawl Time(m:s) | Crawl Time(s) | File Per Second | Success | Error | |
| FoxIT | I | 1041 | 1751 | 1.68 | 6:02 | 362 | 2.88 | 1064 | 0 |
| Adobe | I | 1041 | 1751 | 1.68 | 30:03 | 1803 | 0.58 | 1063 | 1 |
| FoxIT | II | 2676 | 2406 | 0.90 | 7:46 | 466 | 5.74 | 2759 | 0 |
| Adobe | II | 2676 | 2406 | 0.90 | 40:58 | 2458 | 1.09 | 2757 | 2 |
On average, FoxIT x64 PDF ifilter is still ~5 times faster than the Adobe one. But FoxIT charges 330 USD for a 2 core machine, while Adobe PDF iFilter is free. So if PDF indexing is the key to your business, go with FoxIT to get much better performance. If not, you may play with Adobe PDF iFilter to furfill some simple and basic request.