Best antivirus for online multiplayer gaming

I was wondering if there was an antivirus or other protection that would keep malware off a computer connected to a massive multiplayer online game. I am not really sure if I should ask this forum or the trojan one. Any knowledgeable answer will be very appreciated.
SourMilk out.

 

I like Avira classic for on line gaming, mostly BF2142. I use First Defense so I can run several snapshots and boot back and forth as needed, I set one up with Avira for gaming and a more secure snapshot with Nod for surfing. Nod is light and fast but it caused me to lose my connection to the server when playing BF on line, it was much better if I set it up to only scan exe files, I think it was trying to scan all files incoming and outgoing during gaming and it caused more disconnections than I like. Another strategy is to use a Freeze program like FDISR or Deep Freeze and run no AV while gaming, when you are done gaming a simple reboot will get rid of any malware you acquired wile playing. If you use the freeze method be aware that any progress that you make in the game that is saved to you're computer will be lost with the reboot. In the case of BF2142 the progress is saved on the server so it does not matter.

PS i almost forgot AVIRA classic is free and quite good.

 

Thanks. I thought about FDISR but did not know if it would interfere with online gaming. Good to know it won't. You might want to place your savegame files on another drive or partition rather than the C: drive. That way you will be able to save your progress. I put the My Documents on a drive other than C: just for that purpose.

I was looking at NOD32 and am glad you replied. I know that Antivir Classic is a good antivirus but did not know until now it would protect you in a multiplayer environment. I was also looking at Avast because of it's network, P2P, and web filters but still don't know if it is effective in online gaming since it is not particularly mentioned on their website. Thanks again for the reply.

 

Anything that has an real-time scanner that scans files on access will provide protection under any task. The only thing fancy email/web shields will do is catch malware sooner, instead of when you actually execute it.

 

FDISR is a little expensive but IMHO it is one of the best pieces of software I have ever purchased, it is very powerful. The second snapshot will take up as much hard drive space as the first. a small price to pay for what you get.


I save my game info to a second hard drive if necessary. You can freeze a snapshot with FDISR if you want to, but if you have 2 hard drives you can save the snapshot to the second hard drive and refresh one from the other. Very cool stuff, if you get a game patch and decide after a few days that you wish you had not downloaded it, no problem just refresh from the stored snapshot and all is well again. If you try an AV and don't like it, refresh and it's like it was never there.

 

Yes, and cause more trouble with on line games.

 

I use nod32 on my gaming system. It offers great protection and minimal performance impact from my experiences.

 

And what makes you say that, exactly?

In fact, the only impact I can imagine that fancy resident protection (rather than basic on-access scanning) are likely to introduce are negative, since they take up more system resources. An on-access file scanner, assuming it's reliable, will still catch viruses when the OS reads them, adding any other resident protection will only result in more memory usage and files being scanned multiple times.

 

Read post #2, I have more problems with NOD while playing ON LINE games. It works fine for off line games. I have ran it for several years, I went through the steps to configure it for gaming and managed some success, but then I would need to adjust it back to make it more secure for surfing. BF2142 has known issues with server connection drops while in game, very annoying. For me the easiest way to game is to run FDISR and have a snapshot optimized for gaming and another for surfing, when I had NOD running in my game snapshot I had a weird issue I could not fix, when I would try and start the game with the desktop shortcut I would need to click it several times to get the game running even though when I punched up running processes it would show the game running so I would need to kill the process and click the desktop icon again, after 2 or 3 attempts I would get the game running, I uninstalled NOD in that snapshot and installed AVIRA, problem gone. I would like to here from others that play BF2142 and run NOD, perhaps it is just fine with other on line games.

 

Hi divedog . You can try to install NOD32 with Advanced setup and not to install IMON . The overall protection level would still be the same , don't worry . If you have up-to-date and effectlive browser , don't worry at all about the protection IMON may give you . AMON is still there

 

Apparently you must've misunderstood me. I was replying the OP's question by saying that any antivirus software with a normal on-access scanner will do, which I believe is certainly the case. Not that I know of any particular bugs that NOD32 has with your game, but I daresay that's the rare exception, rather than the rule.

 

Another vote for NOD here

 

Agreed, I like Nod and have recommended it to many over the years, however on my system AVIRA classic works better for on line gaming and it's free.

 

i like nod32 alot and its meant to be great for gaming pc's
but it seems most http scanners have problems imon,web av etc etc.
i havent heard of any problem with the avast http scanner thou and i dont know what they do differently with http scanners to everyone else.
lodore

 

no problems gaming here with dr.web, countless hours on flight simulator x here,

still cant fly the bloody thing.

 

Avast uses a local proxy for web scanner. The others hook the winsock (LSP).
IMON will be removed/replaced in NOD 32 3.xx.

 

what does webav in kaspersky use?
lodore

 

I like NOD32 alot and its great for gaming PC's
( BF2 , ET , CS , CZ , CSS, WoW - Player )

 

Donno what kind of difference does AV make for games. I don't see anything different with NOD32, avast!, AntiVir or AOL AVS installed.

Athlon XP 2400+@2,3GHz, 1,5GB of RAM (400MHz 2-3-3-6) and Maxtor ATA133 200GB HDD drive backed up by GeForce 6600GT.

 

Me neither. No offense SourMilk, you must have had some reason to ask this. But other than comparing AV's for their performance impact, i fail to see why games would make you choose another AV.

 

Dr. Web is very, very light. Good protection and little performance hit. It's reasonably priced at $28US. $20 to renew. If you migrate from another paid antivirus software, you can get a 50% discount on Dr. Web.

 

i too, dont understand why gaming should make a difference in choosing or switching an antivirus.

didnt zonealarm have a gaming option in their suite, maybe he means something to do with that?

 

I think it hooks in the winsock too, but I´m not sure.

 

If you're AV causes disconnections from the server or other undesirable effects while playing on line then you're choices are change AVs or no AV. I have used AVs where the http scanner slows down the internet connection perceivably. I am no expert but I believe the same thing happens with some AVs while playing games on line, they can slow down the connection to the server by scanning all of the data incoming and outgoing. When playing on line with NOD my ping can be as high as 100, boot to gaming snapshot with AVIRA same server, the ping drops to 40, go figure.

 

None taken . I was just wondering if there was an AV that would protect an online gamer from malware they might receive from an infected game server. Somehow the answers have turned to performance. I guess I didn't make my question clear enough.

Thanks to all who replied.
SourMilk out