App Review Do Antiviruses Still Slow You Down? (2020) (LTT)

[CyberPanther]

Content source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzeKPiwEfXk

Looking forward to your comments

 

[Tutman]

Short answer: Yes alot of them still do.

 

[BigWrench]

Yes....Absolutely. Some more than others, I've found that in my personal experience.

 

[MacDefender]

Yeah, anything that makes your machine do more work is going to slow it down to some degree. Whether or not it's enough for you to care is a different matter.

But something that has changed is that at least ever since Windows 10 / Windows Defender, "not" running AV for most people actually means running Windows Defender by default, and Windows Defender is often one of the slower ones at cloud scanning on execution, so ironically installing a third party AV sometimes might speed up your system.

At the end of the day, nothing will be as fast and light as disabling all AV protection.

 

[ForgottenSeer 55474]

Hey, Yes a lot of AV-Suites slow you down, but not all, I have been trying many Trials, Avast,Norton & Bitdefender, and I think not Bitdefender is the worst by far, that is why I have BTS as my AV today.

 

[MacDefender]

One thing to keep in mind with rapidly trying different AVs is that almost every AV today uses either a hash based or a NTFS metadata based caching mechanism to bypass scanning files that they know are clean. As a result, they usually require one full system scan before your PC starts running at the normal speed. Trying too many AVs without giving them enough time to settle down can give you a negative impression that isn't representative of how it really behaves.

 

[BigWrench]

One thing to keep in mind with rapidly trying different AVs is that almost every AV today uses either a hash based or a NTFS metadata based caching mechanism to bypass scanning files that they know are clean. As a result, they usually require one full system scan before your PC starts running at the normal speed. Trying too many AVs without giving them enough time to settle down can give you a negative impression that isn't representative of how it really behaves.

Amen to that

 

[Divine_Barakah]

ZoneAlarm is the heaviest of the products I tried recently.

 

[BigWrench]

I've got to say..... The reconfigured (Avira under the hood) F SECURE has ticked all my boxes!

 

[MacDefender]

I've got to say..... The reconfigured (Avira under the hood) F SECURE has ticked all my boxes!

Yeah ditto! Lately, the kitchen sink suite of my choice has been Kaspersky Total Security (it's really hard to argue with its performance both static and dynamic, and the total-ness of the suite rarely results in bothersome unneeded functionality).

However, F-Secure SAFE is still my favorite no-frills AV. Great signatures especially since they switched to Avira, always light, and basically no configuration options needed.

 

[videogamer1500]

Of course Antivirus slow down your pcs. The main reason is that its job is to do realtime scanning of your files. Most consumers are lazy and do not manual scan their pcs and many people do not know how to use the Internet properly and may be vulnerable to viruses.

Yeah ditto! Lately, the kitchen sink suite of my choice has been Kaspersky Total Security (it's really hard to argue with its performance both static and dynamic, and the total-ness of the suite rarely results in bothersome unneeded functionality).

However, F-Secure SAFE is still my favorite no-frills AV. Great signatures especially since they switched to Avira, always light, and basically no configuration options needed.

The point is that most users can configurate the antiviruses to not do auto scanning and to only scan files when opened and the disk usage would be way lower and the performance would be way better. Linus just had all the settings on default like scan with Vt-d which makes it worse on Intel cpus and badly effects AMD cpus. If he had a product like Avast, the webpage even tells you to disable that feature in their antivirus. Fsecure did a good job moving from Bitdefender's engine which is the one of the highest on disk usage so that is a plus. I may even use Fsecure because of this because Avira's main program forces you to install bloatware to use their antivirus and Fsecure does not so that is a plus. Avira is a top 5 antivirus and I'm glad that it is getting more respect. Too many antiviruses still rely on Bitdefender's engine. Kaspersky is also really heavy on disk usage because it uses auto scanning to the extreme and Kaspersky for many years has to keep its reputation of being the best antivirus in terms of signatures competing neck in neck with Bitdefender on who can catch the most threats and who can have the best engine. I wish Kaspersky would license their engine to more companies other than the likes of Zone Alarm, Baidu Antivirus, or Defender Pro.

 

[roger_m]

Linus tested the three worst antiviruses in terms of performance and they did bad "shocker."

Norton is very light these days and McAfee is even lighter. There are many antiviruses which cause a lot more system impact.

 

[videogamer1500]

Norton is very light these days and McAfee is even lighter. There are many antiviruses which cause a lot more system impact.

Performance Test April 2020 | AV-Comparatives This is only half true. Mcafee is one of the best while Norton is still one of the worse. I am surprised Kaspersky did the best out of all of them along with K7 antivirus, Windows Defender, and Mcafee. I have edited my post. Ty for the clarification. They are 3 of the worse reputable antiviruses however. Linus was purposely setting them up for failure. He did a test on the first run instead of sequential runs and left some of the settings on default. Even Linus himself said that the difference is 1-3% at worse, but made it seem like such a huge number without context. Of course when the antivirus has to scan every file you transfer it will halt the transfer process while it scans it. Does he want the antivirus to not do its job? He refused to mention he could edit files to turn of auto scanning which if he did the tests then it would show little to no difference. If he change the software to exclude safe files or locations it would also improve the results as well. He forgets that most antiviruses have a game mode in them if he properly enabled it.

 

[roger_m]

Performance Test April 2020 | AV-Comparatives This is only half true. Mcafee is one of the best while Norton is still one of the worse.

The problem with performance tests like that, is that I often find my own experience with antiviruses is very different to the test results. For example, the test indicates that Kaspersky is lighter than Norton, while based on my own usage, Norton is definitely noticably lighter. As always, the only real way to get an accurate idea of performance is to install antiviruses and see how they perform on your own computers.

I agree about Linus making a big deal out of fairly minor increases in transfer speeds.

 

[videogamer1500]

The problem with performance tests like that, is that I often find my own experience with antiviruses is very different to the test results. For example, the test indicates that Kaspersky is lighter than Norton, while based on my own usage, Norton is definitely noticably lighter. As always, the only real way to accurate idea of performance is to install antiviruses and see how they perform on your own computers.

I agree about Linus making a big deal out of fairly minor increases in transfer speeds.

That is why I am surprised because I find Kaspersky generally heavy yet based on those tests, Kaspersky is literally the best antivirus in the world as it has similar protection to Bitdefender and apparently is as light as Windows Defender. It makes no sense to me, but like Linus, they do certain things and use certain hardware and software which could influence their results.

There results can also be debunked because they did an ealier test in feburary which would agree with what you said Test antivirus software for Windows 10 - February 2020
According to the Windows 10 tests, Norton is also the best in performance along with Kaspersky, Avira, Fsecure, Bullguard, K7, McAfee, Windows Defender, Escan, Pc Matic, and Vipre. So even AV Labs themselves always debunk their tests.

Bitdefender is apparently so bad that it did not even make the top 10 which I totally disagree with.
Avira is apparently the #1 antivirus in the world which is debatable
Also when you look at their results, you see that some of them perform worse than others.
Norton is defiantly lighter than Kaspersky when looking at their results yet they are rated the same hummmmm
Fsecure is the lightest when looking at the results yet it is not rated as such hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Test antivirus software for Windows 10 - August 2024

The current tests of antivirus software for Windows 10 from August 2024 of AV-TEST, the leading international and independent service provider for antivirus software and malware.

www.av-test.org

 

[SumTingWong]

The answer is yes

Any security software that is running realtime will have performance impact as it read/write data to your drive, and using your ram or cpu.

 

[Dhruv2193]

All of them do as they work in real time and so they will consume some resources. The only thing is some consume less and some consume more. This is true for all software which have an active process in taskmanager.

 

[Cortex]

There is some impact even on a fast PC but for me it's a necessary evil - A lot of the speed losses can be negated by removing unneeded services such as search, prefetch, superfetch none of which are needed esp with a SSD yet windows often leaves them running on a clean install with a SSD - Most programs installed feel they are of such importance they start & windows start, most of these aren't needed - I can usually speed even a prehistoric PC by removing unwanted stuff (well maybe)

 

[Vitali Ortzi]

There is some impact even on a fast PC but for me it's a necessary evil - A lot of the speed losses can be negated by removing unneeded services such as search, prefetch, superfetch none of which are needed esp with a SSD yet windows often leaves them running on a clean install with a SSD - Most programs installed feel they are of such importance they start & windows start, most of these aren't needed - I can usually speed even a prehistoric PC by removing unwanted stuff (well maybe)

People on my digital Life fourm did it with a prehistoric Pc.
It required twaeks since it didn't have some required instructions for running windows 10.

 

[TairikuOkami]

Roughly 90% people have common devices, so yes, it does. Using Forticlient on my laptop, booting took ages and a browser was starting for 40 secs instead of 20! A typical response: Buy a better PC! Well not everyone is willing to spend his savings, just so he could run AV, when he can simply uninstall it.

Any security software that is running realtime will have performance impact as it read/write data to your drive, and using your ram or cpu.

Cloud AVs can handle it pretty well without any noticeable slow down. But the lack of a proper behaviour monitoring is not good for high risk users.