Do Virus Scanners Slow Down Your System?

[Alvin Smith]

The SECURITY SCAM is NO DIFFERENT than your local TARGET store making you pay a surcharge for parking lot security ... because they chose to build their store in a bad neighborhood !! GET REAL !!

I mean ... If HOME DEPOT cannot keep my car safe, in THEIR OWN parking lot, then I will find some other place and some other way to shop ... or I will just NOT SHOP. I am not paying extra (to some security firm) to watch my car, while I am in the store.

They can roll that cost into their REGULAR COST STRUCTURE ... COST OF DOING BUSINESS!

Making a COST CENTER, out of transaction and identity security is a FEAR-BASED marketing SCAM that amounts to nothing less than a PROTECTION RACKET ... ORGANIZED CRIME (at best).

= REVOLT ! =

 

[Onus]

I have worked in environments with varying degrees of emphasis on security. Layering on security software eats other resources besides just CPU cycles. A machine with only 1GB of RAM can only take so many layers before the RAM available to applications dips below "recommended" levels and sometimes even down to or below "minimum" levels. RAM footprints are absolutely essential information when deciding what kinds of software you can run, or what upgrades you need if you must run them (e.g. per Policies or something like Clean Access Agent).
I'm sure my 4GB x4 isn't going to sweat any of these layers, but an old Dell Optiplex is going to take it like a kick in the crotch.

 

[dertechie]

Interesting. Now try this on a netbook and a P4/1GB/IDE machine.

 

[gsacks]

None of these programs will ever touch my system again. I don't know how you achieved those benchmarks, but in real world performance, these programs are a drag. OK, really I am only talking about Norton. When Comcast switched from McAfee to Norton, my systems all become noticeably slower and it messed with my media server as well. Even though I opened up access to the correct programs and ports, my PlayOn and iTunes servers became intermittently unavailable on my network. It was the intermittent part that was most frustrating. That's not cool at all. I ripped that thing out and completely reinstalled Windows. Now I just use MS Security Essentials and everything is way more stable. Norton is junk.

 

[K2N hater]

[citation][nom]Alvin Smith[/nom]Security software is a SCAM and there is no way to tell if these very companies are not (will not) promulgate further exploits to ensure their own profits[/citation]
Scam or not, very few users can keep their boxes safe without AV. I've installed hundreds of them over years but nothing convinces me people with technical knowledge should use them.

For those I'd suggest using firewall software. Allied with the right browser extensions (I use BetterPrivacy and NoScript but there are many others) and other techniques (using your router's blocking/filtering capabilities, doing most of the work on a guest account or even editing your HOSTS file) it helps protecting your privacy, decreases link % usage and prevents viruses from attacking windows services, rather than fixing the damage afterwards.

 

[Rahbot]

I surprised you didnt include any of Avast stuff.

 

[Guest]

This article really misses the mark on a very important factor that IS affected by Anti-Virus software, especially in older machines - BOOT UP TIME! And for fun..do it on a Dell Dimension 2400 which is found in alot of businesses (especially law firms). Take a Dell 2400 with 512MB of Ram on Windows XP. THEN show me a surprise conclusion.

 

[hogan773]

Piling on as to why not include Microsoft SE....."we had to draw the line somewhere"

I assume that the result would have been similar (ie doesnt tax system).

I have used MSE on my PCs for the past year, and I gotta say I LOVE not having to waste time doing the "buy Norton 2x for 2 different PCs, mail in a total of FOUR rebates, wait 6 weeks, spend 4 debit rebate cards at the gas station" thing EVERY NOVEMBER. I just thought about this the other night actually as I was submitting a rebate for something else. YAY! Go MSE!

 

[jimkiler]

you will not test MS Security Essentials but you will use their logo in the article?

 

[bounty]

3.1 Ghz dual core will probably not notice AV much. However I hardly get complaints about any software being sluggish on a brand new 3.1 Ghz system. For a more real world test try installing a few tool bars, included free with your Java/Adobe updates. Install 3 or four browsers, some animated desktop flags, search buddy, Google Desktop etc. Have a bunch of Quicktime and RealPlayer crap starting up, and scale this whole thing down to an Atom processor or maybe a Dual 2.2 Ghz box.

While I agree things are better than last decade, but I think there is still room for improvement. Also if AV is causing programs to startup slower, that's similar to the difference between HDD's and SSD's which people swear by. Application startup time is critical to how you percieve your computer is performing. Firefox startup time is a great example of that, it literally drives me nuts, which is why I still mainly use IE.
People power on their computer, then while AV is still loading, all the stuff in the lower right is loading, people start trying to open IM, a few complex flash (news, web email etc.) websites, Outlook, music playing software, Excel attachment in an email and maybe some misc PDF. Script that and bench power on to loaded with and w/o AV on a 2 Ghz box w/ 2GB RAM. That's where people start off the day thinking their box is crap.

 

[ALANMAN]

I think I speak for many of us when I say I would have liked to see more offerings benchmarked, especially free ones like Avira, Avast, and Microsoft Security Essentials among others.

 

[captaincharisma]

[citation][nom]cjl[/nom]Norton has VASTLY improved compared to what it used to be. I use Norton 360, and I have to say that it has been a great product.[/citation]

if norton knew in the future we would have computers like we do now they would have kept it at the crappy performance it was in the 90's. heck with how bad it was you probably needed a quad core CPU to have a PC running smoothly

too bad they didn't have NOD32 on the list

 

[dainsane1]

why is the microsoft av missing from this list? would like to see how nod32 stacks up as well.

add any av to an old memory starved system and it's lag city. some people still have laptops w/ 256mb and continue to use em. hell i have one of those beside my bed as an mp3 player and a bit of browsing (basic browsing). the up side with such an ancient machine is i can spot the excess activity and pull the power before a virus gets too deep into the system

 

[drakepandor]

I would like to point out to those who want to test doing a scan with a game running, the newest version of Norton uses full-screen detection to prevent that from happening. You can also put the program name into a list so even if you play in a window if you are playing a game that you put into the list - the scan won't start until you exit the game, it also prevents it from giving you pop-up prompts until after you close the game.

I don't know if other antivirus programs have that in them, but if they do manually telling the program to do a scan and run a game seems like a pointless test for those programs as it would never occur through natural use.

I do agree that they should have included Microsoft Security Essentials, not only because it is getting more and more users, but if you are going to use the logo for a program in an article - you should really have the program in the article.

 

[Guest]

I would have liked it if Toms Hardware had included Microsoft Security Essentials in the tests.

 

[hardwarekid9756]

So, this is literally my job (I work for a security software company) and I can take some pretty great issue with about half a dozen of these tests. Like, I seriously test AV software performance day-in and day-out, as my occupation, and I can flat out that your results are missing a lot, probably because you're using synthetic tests like Sandra and Vantage, but also because you're not testing some of the other more important things. Anyway, if you're really interested in how to benchmark software, ebennett@webroot.com

 

[Major7up]

No Vipre? May not yet have the name recognition of some of the others but I still think it should have been included. It's been my preference for a while now.

 

[w1zz4]

This article is laughable, where are all the free antivirus (you know, the ones most people run? Oh I forgot, toms is now a big infomercial).

 

[Peciura]

Article important to most computer users - cant wait for more related articles .

I would like to see more free AV mentioned by other readers and my favorite Comodo Internet Security Premium, because it is free for both home and business.

 

[SteelCity1981]

I think it takes a combination of the processor evolution and the anti-vurs evolution is the result of what we are seeing today in these benchmarks.

 

[steiner666]

definitely would have liked for there to have been some Eset products tested.

 

[rfatcheric]

[citation][nom]apache_lives[/nom]this is tested on a fresh install - the average system has a ~2 year old install and fragmentation and lower end hdd's, combind with a crapload of other software trying to startup - no really a real world benchmark.[/citation]

I think you're confused as to what this benchmark was setting out to show. Which is that AV software doesn't adversely effect performance. Why would it be a good idea to throw in extra variables to determine this?

It sounds like you want to know if AV software adversely effects performance of machines that already dont perform well.... Let me go ahead and end the suspense for you, those machines will suck just a bit worse with AV software.

 

[hogan773]

This article is laughable, where are all the free antivirus (you know, the ones most people run? Oh I forgot, toms is now a big infomercial).

Maybe someone is worried that it will show the exact same performance as all the paid apps

 

[tom thumb]

Microsoft Security Essentials isn't in this. Am I missing something? Is there a reason it was not included? The consensus is that it does better (interferes less) with application loading, but it would have been nice to see if this was true.

 

[gm0n3y]

Aside from any performance considerations, I don't use virus scanners because they tend to have conflicts with a lot of other software. I haven't used an antivirus on my home machine for the last ~7 years and I haven't had a single virus. The same goes for most tech-savvy people I know. Sure, I'd install one on my parents computer, but they don't really care about performance anyways.

I actually tried to install MSE on my current windows 7 build and it caused my system to hang randomly for ~5 minutes at a time when browsing the file system. A few of the games I play just wouldn't run at all with MSE installed. Eventually I uninstalled it and everything worked fine again.