Avira

Discussion in 'other anti-virus software' started by JerryM, Apr 16, 2013.

  1. anon

    anon Registered Member

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  2. Kerodo

    Kerodo Registered Member

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    Probably Avira. Avast is ridiculously bloated nowadays....
     
  3. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    It's difficult to give an objective answer as what is light on one computer might be heavier on another machine (this could be due to other different programs installed which may or may not conflict with the AV. Avira lately is very light, but the best way is to test it yourself on the same machine that you are using Avast (making sure that Avast is thoroughly removed).
     
    Last edited: Oct 29, 2014
  4. RejZoR

    RejZoR Lurker

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    You can trim down avast! more than AVIRA actually. If you just install 3 shields and NG and that's it, it's still the slimmest option.
     
  5. Cmhelper

    Cmhelper Registered Member

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    Do you have some numbers about the used memory and storage space of avast?

    I agree with @Osaban: Difficult to compare it exactly if software is tested on two different machines or different scenario on the same machine.
     
  6. RejZoR

    RejZoR Lurker

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    Is memory even relevant anymore? People are still so obsessed over memory consumption shown in the task manager. I haven't opened that thing ever since i've left behind Windows XP, which was like 7 years ago (Vista release).

    As for the disk space, i'm frankly not checking it either. I have a 2TB drive which is very old now and by no means the biggest by todays standards and i never bother to check program install size. Neither i do on a laptop with 128GB SSD and neither on tablet with 64GB SSD storage. If app is 20MB, 200MB or 500MB, does it really matter?
     
  7. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    The only situation where it matters is if your computer does not have enough RAM installed. Other than that, it simply does not matter at all, and it quite honestly suprises me how many people here want their security software to have minimal RAM use. I guess they don't realise that RAM usage has nothing to do with the amount of system impact a security solution will have.
     
  8. Nebulus

    Nebulus Registered Member

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    Avast is the lighter choice in terms of resource usage. Avira always uses 200MB+ of memory which are loaded at boot time, which in turn slows down the booting process. However, neither one slows normal usage of applications on your computer and this is the most important part.
     
  9. Pat MacKnife

    Pat MacKnife Registered Member

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    Avira uses only about 25MB-40MB on my computer and boot time is fast when i tested few weeks ago.
     
  10. anon

    anon Registered Member

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    o_O

    Avira Suite 2014: 39,1 MB total.......
    http://i.imgur.com/TkGEJvq.png
    https://www.wilderssecurity.com/thre...malware-2-released.361805/page-3#post-2354396

    Avira Pro 2015 (Product version 14.0.7.306): abt. the same RAM usage (20-60MB).

    ---------------
    +1
     
    Last edited: Nov 1, 2014
  11. Osaban

    Osaban Registered Member

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    Last edited: Nov 1, 2014
  12. Nebulus

    Nebulus Registered Member

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    Avira-memusage.PNG
     
  13. Mortal Raptor

    Mortal Raptor Banned

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    OMG I can't believe people still judge an AV's lightness by its RAM usage! That is so 2000ish! It's all about how low an AV FEELS! How it handles real time scanning! not the amount of RAM it uses! Heck it can use all the RAM it wants as long as it will give me snappy performance!
     
  14. clocks

    clocks Registered Member

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    That's even sillier and more subjective than judging by ram usage. Metrics & tests should be used, not "how it feels".
     
  15. siketa

    siketa Registered Member

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  16. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    No it's not. There is no correlation between RAM usage and performance. If you've got adequate RAM installed then RAM usage is meaningless. On the other hand you don't need to do any benchmarks to judge peformance. If one antivirus is causing noticable slowdowns and another one isn't, then whats the point of doing benchmarking?
     
  17. Mortal Raptor

    Mortal Raptor Banned

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    +1, exactly my point.

    For example, Kaspersky AV uses little RAM, yet it feels like I have downgraded my laptop to half the speed of the CPU and put an HDD, so who cares about RAM usage here? maybe you, not meh
     
  18. clocks

    clocks Registered Member

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    And there is no correlation between how light person A feels an AV program is versus person B. Are you saying the testing services should just start ranking AV performance on how light it feels to them? Dumb!

    I'm not saying ram is everything, you need to look at CPU time, IO metrics, and other testing. How is feels can vary greatly between machines and what one user thinks compared to another.
     
  19. Nebulus

    Nebulus Registered Member

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    I don't care about working set, I care about real (physical) RAM that is occupied by a program. I could make two screenshots with physical RAM usage - with and without Avira installed. You will see that the difference in usage is about the same as the one given by "Private Bytes".
     
  20. roger_m

    roger_m Registered Member

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    Well not much anyway. Certainly there are antiviruses which are claimed to be light when I find them to be the opposite of that. But, I was just thinking that an individual can notice if an antivirus is slowing down their system and see how much it is impacting their system compared to other antiviruses without having to do benchmarking. I was not looking at the bigger picture of different people comparing how antivirus feel. I agree this is pointless, as antiviruses do tend to perform differently on different computers. I've used antiviruses which are claimed by some users to be very light, when I have found them to be the opposite of that.
    No, as I have just explained. But, even benchmarking does not give accurate results, as with different computers antiviruses can cause varying system load (i.e. an antivirus which is light on one computer may not be light on another computer - something I've witnessed myself).
     
  21. anon

    anon Registered Member

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    Therefore your RAM usage it' only 30.300K and not 200+ MB.

    As the siketa noted already, I also think that when we are talking about the "RAM usage" all we mean the Working set.
    You must be the only one who mean the Private bytes.
     
  22. Nebulus

    Nebulus Registered Member

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    A quick internet search pointed me in the right direction about the Private Bytes and Working Set (thanks Siketa and Anon). However, that was what I meant about the difference between no AV and Avira, given the same conditions (XPSP3 inside Virtualbox):

    Without AV:
    MemUsage-NoAV.PNG

    With Avira:
    MemUsage-Avira.PNG

    The difference is more than 30MB no matter how you look at it... Any explanation?
     
  23. zfactor

    zfactor Registered Member

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    while i do not agree that you should only judge an av by its ram usage i do however feel some av's use FAR to much ram. many av's can do their job with somewhere between 30-100mb of ram and i think that is acceptable but some others can use upwards of hundreds of mb of ram 300+ and i find that totally ridiculous when most can do it with so little i find that over the top. the other thing that i cant stand is when a av has like 20+ procc's that is crazy. some only use one. even avira imo has to many and should be narrowed down a bit. but ones that use SO MANY procc's i will avoid also.

    and i do agree with the feel of how heavy an av is. some av's can only use 30mb of ram and bring a system to a crawl but to me using 300-400mb of ram is just as bad and in these days totally uneeded.

    "clocks said:
    And there is no correlation between how light person A feels an AV program is versus person B."

    i totally disagree. when i install an av on so many pc's 95% of the people will tell me they think it feels a certain way and only a few will feel different. an example is when i used to install kaspersky and i would get calls left and right from people telling how bogged down or slow their systems were after installing it and asking me to remove it for something else. person a and b all had the same feedback on it. if an av feels heavy imo it will always be heavy. there is no way a super heavy av will be light as a feather on another pc. now the amount of impact a user feels is can vary some between people. sometimes person a will tolerate more of an impact on a system then person b and not think that amount of impact is that much. but even then i found and still find now that this does not vary to much from person to person and on various systems especially when a av is a heavy one.

    "For example, Kaspersky AV uses little RAM, yet it feels like I have downgraded my laptop to half the speed of the CPU and put an HDD, so who cares about RAM usage here? maybe you, not meh"

    imo kaspersky is one that even though people always say it only uses x amount of ram so it cant be heavy and they tell me im crazy i find it will still even with 2015 and yes i have extensively tested it feel like it brings a system to its knees. i refuse to install it on ANY machines even with any improvements they have made (which i dont find to be all that much i found the 2009 version FAR lighter then the newest ones)

    and i am not specifically singling out kaspersky here i used that as an example because it was mentioned above.
     
  24. Mortal Raptor

    Mortal Raptor Banned

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    So how come KIS here ( AV-TEST ) gets a top rating when it comes to performance, doesn't make any sense and I feel AV-TEST was being paid to lie about this. Call me crazy, but even if 100 people tell me Kaspersky is light I will not believe, I have a 3 year license for KAV and KIS that are sitting around collecting dust. I simply will not downgrade my computer's performance no matter how good an AV was. Where you can really notice KAV killing a system is this.....

    Grab a big Setup.exe file for example, Nero Platinum Suite 2015 and launch it with KAV then launch it with another AV and you will see how slow KAV launches it because it first has to scan the whole internals of the EXE. Not trying to compare A PLUS B here just making an example of how an AV *feels* heavy or not. This is not a subjective opinion, it's a fact.
     
  25. FreddyFreeloader

    FreddyFreeloader Registered Member

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    a.png
    Regardless of memory usage, Avira is feather light.
     
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