Do Antivirus Suites Impact Your PC's Performance?

[JohnnyLucky]

Interesting article. Liked the boiling water analogy.

Have AV programs reached the point of diminishing returns?

 

[mayankleoboy1]

how can any software reduce boot times? unless its stopping all the startup windows services, which would be really harmful.

 

[clonazepam]

I have ccleaner run a custom cleanup at start-up. I'm going to assume that helps any AV scan right off the bat. Webroot's AV has the option you can select or deselect "Only New Files or Files That Have Changed" when doing a manual scan.

I really appreciated my system even more over the weekend. I was helping a friend by removing virus/spyware from his dated laptop. It was running on a celeron 1.3-1.6ghz (cant remember exactly), 512MB ram, 30 something GB IDE HDD, with Windows XP. OMG! If the author had tested the different AVs on this system, he'd still be running the tests. I put it thru the normal paces, like downloading/installing/scanning with Ad-Aware, Spybot, ccleaner, webroot spysweeper, etc and then go in manually checking msconfig/services.msc/regedit. I manually examine every .exe on the root, windows, and system32 directories. Uninstall all that software, throw on MSE, one final scan, and call it a day... not. I didn't stay on top of it all day, every day, but I didn't feel comfortable with calling it finished until the 3rd day. Finalized the removals, added over 100 security updates and service pack 3, as well as a copy of openoffice.

The main point from all that rambling, is that on that system, everything took forever to complete.

I'd like to see this round-up done again with more products. I'd like to see it on something more mainstream like a core 2 quad 6600 with 2-4GB RAM, and any decent 7200 rpm HDD. I think that would be sufficient to produce noticeable differences in performance between the various products.

 

[williamvw]

[citation][nom]lucas1024[/nom]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]
It seems bizarre probably because you'd never been a professional reviewer. I knew going in that I had enough time to test six products. Of the dozens of likely candidates, which six should I pick? I've learned over many years that, all other things being equal, you pick the companies who will help when you have questions, supply artwork when you need it, and generally make your job a little easier when deadlines loom and sleep is a luxury. I had room for AVG or avast!, not both. So when AVG called me back within two hours and volunteered to put me in touch with a technical contact for advice on testing methodology, I didn't hesitate.

 

[williamvw]

[citation][nom]Inferno1217[/nom]Is this GFI VIPRE antivirus the same as the one Tom's has been trying to give away? If it is it sounds like an ad.[/citation]
Did those scan time results look like an ad to you? Yes, it's the same product, but GFI had zero influence on my test results. Truth be told, most of my methodology was based on input from AVG, Symantec, and especially McAfee, which was immensely helpful and informative behind the scenes.

 

[williamvw]

[citation][nom]lp231[/nom]The screen shot for MSE is the old version. You guys tested this with the newer version of MSE?[/citation]
Yes, the executable was downloaded from Microsoft on October 1.

 

[DSpider]

They do impact performance. Every antivirus software I have tried (BitDefender, Kaspersky, NOD32, Panda, Norton, etc), slowed down the explorer when opening large music/picture folders, game folders, etc. This was especially noticeable on an old Athlon XP 2200+ (1.8 GHz) and 512 MB SDRAM, on Windows XP.

Switched to Linux and I can say that there are some lightning fast file browsers, like "rox" (by far the fastest I have ever tried), "thunar", etc.

 

[ivyanev]

Things has really changed since i last used AV on my own PC.But that wont change my feel about AV : its like killing a fly with a minigun .

 

[rthorington]

What about ESET Nod32? They have a reputation as having one of the lowest resource/performance-impact AV solutions.

 

[rohitbaran]

Edit: Never mind!

 

[Blink]

You didn't test any of the top 3 suites from the charts on the first page. Seriously?

 

[Guest]

[citation][nom]CaedenV[/nom]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![/citation]

Not coming back because of bugs, how do you mean? Bugs in the AV software?

 

[K2N hater]

AV are never to speed up a PC. There must be something very wrong with these numbers.

By the way a high-end PC with 8GB RAM is never to crawl with AV regardless. Now let's see what it does with some 2GB RAM Celeron/Atom...

By the way knowing what NOT to do with your PC is still the safest way to keep your PC and personal data safe without giving up on performance.

 

[pirtnac]

I'd have to ask what power saving state the CPU was placed in due to antivirus running. If an AV program is keeping a processor active and quickly "parks" itself when a test is run, results may differ based upon the tiny amount of time to ramp up the CPU on the clean install with nothing eating time. Or search indexer was running during testing on the "clean" install, and did it's thing before disk images were made for the rest of the tests.

Theory two is the windows security center. I didn't see any notes relating to it during test setup, MS's default settings could be bogging down the system. I know Security Center's constant checking for AV software slowed down my system, as would it's checking the status of UAC while disabled.

Regarding boot times I've seen AV software force it's own service to be the only one to load on startup, with every other service set to delayed boot. Otherwise malware could load first and disable the AV. Your "boot" time with AV installed may indeed be the time it takes the user interface to load, but services starting up afterwards will require a user to wait longer for a usable machine.

 

[Guest]

I don't get why everyone(including Tom's Hardware) only tests stuff on high-end hardware. This is not realistic. Antivirus would make an bigger impact on low-end systems, and that's what most people use anyway. Not everyone can sink a big amount of money on PCs.

 

[pharoahhalfdead]

These so called "ads" for Vipre would not be a good promotion. I use Vipre, and with four hard drives, two velociraptors (600, 300gb) , and two caviar blacks (640.1.5tb), about 50% full, sometimes scans can take three hours. There is an option that allows you to "scan at lower priority (lower cpu usage) which takes extra time. Unlike Norton, Vipre is single threaded, and I never run mine at lower cpu priority. I have AMD x4 @3.5, 8gb ram, so what does that tell you? It's just a horribly slow scanner.

 

[Guest]

I think talking and reading comments and reviews about using Anti Virus. That most users are more afraid their anti virus will mess up their computer then a virus will. The problem is for all that the Anti virus program does. It certainly ads another layer of muck to slow a system down. Now if your running a modern quad core that may be hardly a issues. But if your using a single core netbook its a big issue. My own opinion is on a netbook don't use anything but a online scanner once a week. If you have a power house CPU it really won't matter, Mac's are still very much a choice between a simple AV program like Sophos or nothing at all. I tend to run middle of the road or older hardware. So I prefer Security Essentials from Microsoft. But AVG is good, as well as some other free ones. My question is always do you really want to spend $50 a year on a AV suite that you hate?

 

[Guest]

In my observations I think its only natural for web pages to load slower with AV software. After all it is scanning the page data for issues. But the free AV did not do any worse then the paid suites. So their is no real advantage their. Personally, on a slower computer like a netbook I have. I run Windows 7 Starter and never use Anti Virus software. I do occasionally run a online scan. But have never had a issue. I do however use a modern browser and do all of the updates. The best defense is not to invite viruses through a open door.

 

[pjmelect]

Why not include Malwarebytes in the review? I read a previous comment here that Malwarebytes was not a true anti-virus program and that was why it was not included. This may be true for the free version but not for the paid for version.

No test was done at how effective the anti virus program was at removing a virus on the computer if it was you would find that Malwarebytes wins this test hands down.

It was a mistake to test the anti virus programs with a modern quad core CPU. If you were to use a single core Intel P4 at 3 Gig you would avoid using McAfee or Norton at all costs and that Microsoft Security Essentials would be a much better choice.

Also consider those who don't have broadband and have to rely on dial up, Microsoft Security Essentials would be a bad choice in this case as the updates are very large, AVG would be a better choice in this case.

 

[Guest]

The last line on the last page of the article explains everything.

"Enter to Win a Tom's Enthusiast PC with Vipre Antivirus here."

It would seem that there is a conflict of interest when the article has a contest to win a computer with Vipre Antivirus posted at the end of it, and at the same time there are very favorable performance results for Vipre Antivirus in a substantial amount of the benchmarking results.

Is someone at Tom's Hardware getting their pockets lined with dirty dollar bills?

Conspiracy theories aside, why are we benchmarking with a Core i7 2600K and 8GB of RAM? Why not benchmark using what real people are using, and set up a bench with a dual-core Pentium, and 512MB-2GB of RAM. That's what real people are using in their computers. I would know. I have to fix enough of them every day.

As someone in the IT field, I think it would be more useful to post results from the mid range to low end workstations that the middle class and businesses are buying. Perhaps that's selfish of me to ask, but that's what I'm looking for in an AV article.

 

[fordry06]

[citation][nom]williamvw[/nom]It seems bizarre probably because you'd never been a professional reviewer. I knew going in that I had enough time to test six products. Of the dozens of likely candidates, which six should I pick? I've learned over many years that, all other things being equal, you pick the companies who will help when you have questions, supply artwork when you need it, and generally make your job a little easier when deadlines loom and sleep is a luxury. I had room for AVG or avast!, not both. So when AVG called me back within two hours and volunteered to put me in touch with a technical contact for advice on testing methodology, I didn't hesitate.[/citation]

Guess I realize you are just doing your job as it has been directed, but this skimping (you can't keep a straight face and call it anything else) is why I have become less interested in Toms articles the last few years. I still come for the charts, but geez, if you are going to go to all the effort to go this far into looking at antivirus performance, why do you leave out any of the major players, and lets face it, you left a bunch including 2 major free ones. So if you can't put together an article that actually gives a comprehensive review of the major players in the field, then what is the point? Scared that Avast, which in avcomparative's testing has been the fastest scanner, would blow away Vipre? lol

 

[LLJones]

I am currently fighting with many AV programs. I have downloaded 5 of the free trials and found them to impact my net speed in a very significant way. I have an image of W7 before AV install. Found my connect speed at speedtest went from fast connect and stable speeds (not all the same but stable) to slow connect and spiking with consistent low speeds. Vipre was the only one so far that did not slow down my speed but now BF2 won't load properly or play. I had this problem a couple of years back with vipre and BF2. As for Norton, after loading it, I could not open the net nor would any of my task bar icons work.

I am not saying yea or nay to any AV. These are just the problems I have noticed across 2 computers/ 3 OS. I wish Tom's had of used speedtest as a test.

On to the next one.

 

[face-plants]

You used a 5400 rpm drive to slow the scans down and make the differences stand out between different Anti-Viruses...Yet you used a high-end (for home user standards) Sandy Bridge quad core with 8Gb of RAM. I really don't understand some of the decisions made in designing these tests and why only half a dozen anti-viruses were given any detailed testing. McAfee, Norton, MSoft, and AVG Free...really? Yet no NOD32? Show Eset some love...
NOD32 is one of THE best if not THE best Anti-Virus and has almost zero false positives unlike at least 4 of the main apps you focused on. I don't know about others but having half of my utilities and bench apps deleted of my flash drive constantly because they get flagged as a false positive is enough to make me avoid that AV at all costs.

 

[face-plants]

Maybe Eset didn't offer to send artwork over in time for the charts to go up... After reading that the companies most willing to help with the testing were the ones included...it's no wonder this article seemed more sponsored charts than regular unbiased Tom's material.
Do it again please, on relevant hardware that anti-virus would actually make a difference in performance on. And maybe include more of the anti-virus apps we in the business know, love, or at least deal with on a regular basis.

 

[Guest]

You used the worst AV's. You left out Avira, BitDefender, Avast, Nod32, F-Secure, Panda... Who would chose Norton or McAfee over the ones I listet above?