Installed BD Free on Windows 10 VM

Shadowra

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Bitdefender is an antivirus that I like a lot like Eset, F-Secure and Kaspersky.
In terms of detection, it is among the top 5. And its AI (Theta) is very efficient on recent RedLine samples or bloated files! :)
In terms of consumption, they have created Photom which will adapt to your computer. I didn't have any slowdown on VM, I didn't try it again on my PC.
 

Shadowra

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That one still doesn’t have anything to do with the actual product, but the actual Bitdefender is really good against all sorts of malware too.

Capture d’écran 2023-03-16 105641.png

 

Trident

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View attachment 273613

The theta technology yeah, not Theta itself. It produces different detections and it seems to be one of these next-gen antiviruses based on static analysis and AI, whilst the actual product detections are mainly based on generic signatures and a database that’s over 500 mb large. This database will not be needed for Theta. So the mod needs to go and learn his lesson.
 
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SeriousHoax

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Yeah, Theta is likely to be a ML based static analysis engine. Some of the Theta detection names are often quite similar to detection names you would get from Bitdefender Sandbox, which is available on Enterprise products like Bitdefender GravityZone.
fwiw, installed Bitdefender Free on win10_vm. OK so far, seems very light.
Yeah, it's light. Surprisingly it's very light even on my VM which is stored in a HDD. Only the update process is very slow on HDD. Everything is fast on SSD of course.
 

Trident

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Yeah, Theta is likely to be a ML based static analysis engine. Some of the Theta detection names are often quite similar to detection names you would get from Bitdefender Sandbox, which is available on Enterprise products like Bitdefender GravityZone.

Yeah, it's light. Surprisingly it's very light even on my VM which is stored in a HDD. Only the update process is very slow on HDD. Everything is fast on SSD of course.
Bitdefender is light, effective and connected to Bitdefender Central so it can easily be managed. It’s also quiet and easy to use.
 

piquiteco

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Bitdefender is light, effective and connected to Bitdefender Central so it can easily be managed. It’s also quiet and easy to use.
Is it still light? That's good news, when I used it from 2016-2020 it was light, in old laptop with SSD, it makes me want to go back to using BD as the main AV, but with MD and Emsisoft, it's hard for me to change. With the tool of @Andy Ful the Hard_Configurator I think I settled in, what I wanted was a firewall, but I believe that windows is enough for me and I still have F-Secure license until 2027 that I'm not using. AVS options have a range for me to choose, but unfortunately we only install one at a time.
 

Trident

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Is it still light? That's good news, when I used it from 2016-2020 it was light, in old laptop with SSD, it makes me want to go back to using BD as the main AV, but with MD and Emsisoft, it's hard for me to change. With the tool of @Andy Ful the Hard_Configurator I think I settled in, what I wanted was a firewall, but I believe that windows is enough for me and I still have F-Secure license until 2027 that I'm not using. AVS options have a range for me to choose, but unfortunately we only install one at a time.
I do not provide recommendations like “change this with that” or “choose this over that”, but Bitdefender doesn’t noticeably slow down the system and all components are developed to an acceptable standard. The malicious website blocking feature is really effective (I test them with links from my junk folder which is an ocean of phishing and SCAM) and together with Norton, they block the most.

Anti-malware protection is tested and recognised from all labs.

The Bitdefender firewall is nothing to write home about but does the job.
 
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Trident

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How is the ram and cpu usage?
RAM usage is very high, for PCs with 8GB considering how much a browser and Windows itself uses, I would not recommend installing Bitdefender. But CPU usage on a modern CPU such as 11th Gen Core i5 is very low. On idle, it rarely even reaches 1%. For other metrics I will have to look again, but on full scan, I believe it was about 40% and when opening apps it was <10. Someone who uses Bitdefender at the moment can chime in now with these metrics.
 

Kuttz

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RAM usage is very high, for PCs with 8GB considering how much a browser and Windows itself uses, I would not recommend installing Bitdefender. But CPU usage on a modern CPU such as 11th Gen Core i5 is very low. On idle, it rarely even reaches 1%. For other metrics I will have to look again, but on full scan, I believe it was about 40% and when opening apps it was <10. Someone who uses Bitdefender at the moment can chime in now with these metrics.

The BD antivirus is light on resources and it adapts rather fine on systems with lower RAM. The AV hardly had any impact on the CPU too while running in the background and I don't mind how high the AV uses the CPU, while doing a manual full scan. The impact, if any, I noticed with BD AV was during web browsing where there was a perceptible increase in Latcency or a processing delay, while loading pages. This was the case last time I tried their software few years back and may not be the case anymore.
 

Trident

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The BD antivirus is light on resources and it adapts rather fine on systems with lower RAM. The AV hardly had any impact on the CPU too while running in the background and I don't mind how high the AV uses the CPU, while doing a manual full scan. The impact, if any, I noticed with BD AV was during web browsing where there was a perceptible increase in Latcency or a processing delay, while loading pages. This was the case last time I tried their software few years back and may not be the case anymore.
I haven’t noticed impact on browsing now. RAM usage is always 250-300 mb+ so on 8GB systems it’s not great to have it. It adapts the CPU usage and background operations through Photon, by excluding files from scanning. It doesn’t reduce RAM usage via optimisation.
Bitdefender doesn’t reveal too much information on how Photon works (some is here: Bitdefender Scan Technology Now Powered by Photon) and it will take me ages to find the patent, but some details with questionable credibility are available here: What is Bitdefender Photon Technology? And its Benefits

It seems to be the same like Norton Insight and many others.
 
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Kuttz

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I haven’t noticed impact on browsing now. RAM usage is always 250-300 mb+ so on 8GB systems it’s not great to have it. It adapts the CPU usage and background operations through Photon, by excluding files from scanning.
Bitdefender doesn’t reveal any information on how Photon works and it will take me ages to find the patent, but some information with questionable credibility is available here: What is Bitdefender Photon Technology? And its Benefits

Good to hear that there is no impact on web browsing performance anymore. Regarding RAM usage I am not sure the reported memory usage of Apps in the Task Manager an accurate indicator. Apps like Process Explorer for example shows in-depth details regarding RAM utilization of various Apps running in the background and those details cannot be found in the Windows Task Manager. Many Apps reporting few megs of memory in Task Manger actually shows RAM utilaztion of 100's of megs when monitored using Process Explorer. Since I am not so familiar with the terms mentioned in Process Explorer like working set, private bytes etc I cannot authentically say BD uses more memory or not. What I felt is its low impact on system performance.
 

Trident

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Since I am not so familiar with the terms mentioned in Process Explorer like working set, private bytes etc
Working set is memory that has recently been manipulated, or otherwise said, actively in use. Private bytes is allocated, or reserved space for cases when the process may need more. Task manager displays only the working set, with the assumption that all other memory can be released at any time, if needed.

If Bitdefender displays 300-400mb in task manager, it means the total size will be much higher. In any case, I personally wouldn’t install it on a PC with 8GB, considering that Windows and all the OEM bloatware on idle consume more than 4.
 
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pvsurfer

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When I said goodbye to WVSX in January I installed BD-Free and I'm still using it. My experience with it mostly supports what has been said above, but there is one operational issue that I find annoying, so I think it's worth mentioning here. In order to restore an FP from BD's quarantine, it is necessary to run (open) BD as administrator even though my user account is that of administrator! :rolleyes:
 

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