Serious Discussion Do You Prefer Antivirus Software Lighter on CPU, Memory or Disk?

[SpiderWeb]

Excessive disk usage can cause slowdowns, just as with high CPU use.

That can be true, I agree. But, from my experience when disk usage is that excessive, the CPU is already working overtime and for me that's my cue to uninstall that AV asap. But, any AV written in such a way should not even be marketable.

 

[roger_m]

That can be true, I agree. But, from my experience when disk usage is that excessive, the CPU is already working overtime and for me that's my cue to uninstall that AV asap. But, any AV written in such a way should not even be marketable.

I have seen a number of cases where an antivirus was making my computer run slower due to high disk usage, while CPU use remained low.

 

[Slerion]

I prefer light on CPU ,
Cause my NVME and SSD for sure cant be 24/7 saturated by a AV outside of scans.
Memory is Literally there to be used and wasted if not used.
But cpu?
Should be as low as Possible so unused cores can sleep which reduced power , heat , and noise.
and also CPU is easily bottlenecked in games , programs , and generally tasks on top a Program which keeps like 3 or 4 cpu cores awake form a 8 core cpu really makes the single thread boost behavior of mosts cpus "weird" or non functional.

 

[lokamoka820]

I prefer light on CPU ,
Cause my NVME and SSD for sure cant be 24/7 saturated by a AV outside of scans.
Memory is Literally there to be used and wasted if not used.
But cpu?
Should be as low as Possible so unused cores can sleep which reduced power , heat , and noise.
and also CPU is easily bottlenecked in games , programs , and generally tasks on top a Program which keeps like 3 or 4 cpu cores awake form a 8 core cpu really makes the single thread boost behavior of mosts cpus "weird" or non functional.

And in what is the lightest AV on CPU by your experience?

 

[Slerion]

And in what is the lightest AV on CPU by your experience?

honestly Avast Free ( not the "Avast one" one )
Defender is also pretty Light but for some reason idles often with a few % and keeps multiple cores awake.
Bitdefender too.
Eset was also great.
Norton / kaspersky and multiple others for some spike and keep multiple cores awake.

 

[monkeylove]

You can test them yourself following what AV Comparatives and others did, and then post the numerical results here. Keep in mind, though, that problems may arise as you install and uninstall security programs.

 

[Captain Holly]

I thought I would update here again. Yesterday I got an email from Malwarebytes with some details on their new MV3 Browser Guard extension. I wanted to try it out, to see how MBAM might work with MV3 so I added the MV3 Browser Guard and it seemed to work well with Avast installed. I had no slowdowns or other detrimental effects. The MV3 Browser Guard seems to work just as well as the MV2 version. So then I removed Avast, let WD kick back on, then I added my MBAM Version 5 Lifetime License back to my laptop. Then I tested some web pages that had been slow to load before with the regular MV2 browser guard. Since making the change back to this MV3 MBAM version I have had no slowdowns or any other problems. I am still using the MV2 MB Browser Guard in Firefox, it works fine but I really don't use Firefox that much now.

I don't know if MBAM made any other changes but I would like to continue with WD and MBAM as long as there is no performance impact. I got Edge set up the way I want it too, added a registry tweak to stop Windows from changing my Edge settings after a MS update. Everything is working very well now, fast and light, at the moment I am using 5% of the CPU, 32% of memory and 0% of the SSD. I don't see anything wrong with Avast at all, it's a good AV, said to be one of the most secure but I think Edge and WD are better suited to work together. MBAM will just add a very strong second layer of security. I am going to try this config out for a while and see how it goes.

This is the website MBAM referred me to in the email.

Google Manifest V3 and Malwarebytes Browser Guard | Malwarebytes

C.H.

 

[Jan Willy]

Regarding the change to MV3 with their Browser Guard extension, MWB says also:
"A similar change in Firefox is coming soon"
I think that's a sign that more suppliers of extensions only will offer MV3 versions even for browsers that support MV2. Can we say that MV2 is dying?

 

[lokamoka820]

Regarding the change to MV3 with their Browser Guard extension, MWB says also:
"A similar change in Firefox is coming soon"
I think that's a sign that more suppliers of extensions only will offer MV3 versions even for browsers that support MV2. Can we say that MV2 is dying?

I think sooner or later MV2 will die, google know what it does with its monopoly strategy.

 

[mlnevese]

I think system wide solutions like Adguard will be the future

 

[lokamoka820]

I think system wide solutions like Adguard will be the future

I think for general browsing the MV3 adblockers will be fine, it is YouTube ads the main problem.

 

[Captain Holly]

I think for general browsing the MV3 adblockers will be fine, it is YouTube ads the main problem.

That's my next little research project, I want to check out Free Tube, see how it works and find out if it might be a good alternative to YouTube. Right now I don't know much about Free Tube but would like to see what it's about. The funny thing I found was when I was using Chrome and Ublock Lite I saw ads and black screens in YouTube videos but YouTube Music videos had no ads. I don't know why that happened.

C.H.

 

[BSONE]

I think system wide solutions like Adguard will be the future

I tried Adguard full windows client again. I notice a delay in launching a website, but site resolves very quickly aftrewards. Dealbreaker for me is Very high CPU usage on downloading files.