Do Antivirus Suites Impact Your PC's Performance?

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[citation][nom]rottingsheep[/nom]installing vipre speeds up your computer?i think something is wrong with your numbers.[/citation]
Not really. THG has been pimping Vipre for a while now and even offered it for free a few weeks ago. Remember, $$$ talks, especially in the tech blog industry where every cent counts.
 
[citation][nom]Vladislaus[/nom]These kinds of tests shouldn't be made using almost top of the line hardware. Just take a look at the processor, it's the fastest desktop cpu from intel on sale. Mos people don't have a computer with that kind of processor. Why not do the same test with an i3 or an lower end i5?[/citation]

To the author William Van Winkle, please redo this test using average consumer hardware. Your computer is too fast!
 
Vipre is also based in Clearwater, so its entirely possible the company is some front for the Scientologists and their god Xenu who pretty much own the entire city.
 
I would honestly say this article is good for older systems where boot time and speed is an issue. For new systems though, I would probably do more homework and look at how well an AV cleans vs another. So far, I'm thinking Double AntiSpyware v2 for my next system, but that won't be until Windows 8 is released. There's still a bit of time.
 
The statement that you didn't test Avast! because you didn't get response from the company is frankly, bizarre. Just test the software and report the results - what is there to talk about?!
 
[citation][nom]rottingsheep[/nom]installing vipre speeds up your computer?i think something is wrong with your numbers.[/citation]

this makes no sense. Some research into this must be done. And it's fairly significant too on boot up times
 
I work for a nonprofit that refurbishes PCs for low income families, and we did a TON of research in free AV solutions last year when we wanted to get away from AVG, and we came to a few conclusions:
1) MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) had by far the least impact on system performance of any free AV out there, as well as being straight forward and simple to use for our 'less than savvy' customers. This is very important on refurbished computers that are late gen P4 up to early C2Ds with a limited amount of system memory (1-2GB).
2) Most "free" products really suck to use as they constantly advertise for the paid version (and hide links to the free version *cough* AVG *cough*)
3) If you want a virus, there is no protection in the world that will stop you. We have several customers who simply fall for every 'free' piece of software that claims to give better performance, or free gifts, and they download every infected torrent known to mankind! They will override every warning, and even turn their protection off in order to receive the fruit of their labor.
4) The best antivirus is not actually antivirus, it is having modern secure software combined with common sense. Moving from XP to win7 has nearly stopped all of our new customers from coming back due to bugs, and I think that speaks volumes!

At the end of the day we choose MSE for ease of use, low system impact, and lack of advertising. But we compliment it with Malwarebytes (which fills the holes MSE has pretty well), and we provide information on other AV platforms.

Also, for those of you who have a true physical firewall (like a router other than the crap provided by the internet company) then you do not need a software firewall as it is redundant and will likely do less of a job than the physical firewall in the first place. ie, it makes 'all you can eat' AV suites unnecessary.

Other than the seemingly misplaced orgasmic love of Vipre, this was a fun article. Perhaps a followup on lower end hardware would be called for, especially systems with less RAM where the 'all you can eat' antivirus programs will still bring a system to their knees (though admittedly not as bad as they use to be).

Do I see a quarterly roundup coming?
 
[citation][nom]couchpotato013[/nom]What about Malwarebytes? I haven't seen any mention of it.[/citation]
Malwarebytes is not antivirus; it is specifically for malware. It is a wonderful piece of software, and will complement free AV very well, but it is no replacement for AV.
 
Netbooks, Avast, NOD and Avira are a MUST ina test like this, shame on you Tomshardware...
 
the system used was so high-end, covering a smaller audience than mid range users. of course it wont, or you wont feel the effects in that kind of system.

you should have tested it with dual / tri-core + 2GB RAM systems.
 
Excellent Article.. but:

Strangely you mentioned some important aspects but then failed to test them. For example when you looked at scanning you mentioned that the time a deep scan takes doesn't matter because you could be doing this overnight, however being able to run a scan in the background while multitasking would be beneficial.

I completely agree - being able to scan a drive that is not in use while playing a game and listening to music would be great....
So why didn't you guys devise such a "real world" situation to test?
Otherwise excellent article
 
Avira antivir is one of the best antivirus. Is free.

Why it was not benchmarked??

And also, why the test was not repeated with a SSD?? A SSD may turn a burdensome antivirus into a tolerable one.
 
It would be a good article if test system: netbook (probably with 1 core/or 1 thread) with 1GB of ram plus add of avast, avira, eset. Thanks for effort and waitting for next broaden article
 
[citation][nom]darkstar845[/nom]Why didn't they test this on a computer with average specs? The 8gb ram and very fast CPU might be offsetting the impact that the AVs put on the computer.[/citation]
Average computer specs are a matter of opinion.
 
Where is avast? It's got the lowest footprint/interruption around that I've came across. not to mention it's found viruses that our corporate version of McAfee and others didn't even have a signature for just with it's heuristics.
 
I think it would be worth mentioning which of the anti-virus softwares will automatically scan removable media and mapped network drives/nas, and which will allow you to manually scan them.

I would have liked to see Webroot's products in the line-up. Oh well, maybe next time.

I recently switched back to Webroot AntiVirus with Spysweeper because I tried both AVG and MSE, and they both annoyed me. I don't care how much better or faster the product is, if it annoys me, its out. That's the way it is.
 
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