This is a very subjective question. There are MANY determining factors that you must address before you can say which backup is better than the other.
If you are looking for free backup solutions, like the ones you have listed, it depends on what you are using it for. Some of those are better than others for certain types of work.
I may be a little off here, but this is close.
CPIO is very good about copying tree structure and copying data although it is somewhat antiquated. But many people still use it.
TAR is very good for compressing and storing data to tape and for moving data from one box to another.
DD works well for RAW copying from one disk to another and additionally for creating empty files to "reserve" disk space.
I am not familiar with the others except for dump and rdist.
The real answer is "it depends".