Antivirus Software with lowest impact on system resources

Are we talking about memory footprint or speed decreases on the harddrive?

 

AVG Free & Pro.The lightest av I ever seen.

 

The lightest so far has been Avira, with NOD32 coming second and Kaspersky just after NOD32.

I did find NOD32 v3 more heavy on resources.

 

Agreed and lighter on eleven of my systems than Avira which is in second place. Dr. Web, Kaspersky, Norton, Trend Micro, Panda, AVG, Bitdefender all have more impact on system resources.

 

Well I learnt a lot there! What I learnt is that there is no defacto fastest/lightest anti virus, only a group that may be faster/lighter depending on your system.

 

Actually that is incorrect. There are objective/empirical tests (performed by us and many others) to ascertain the impact (boot speed) of specific AVs. Yes, your specific machine is a variable, but unless you are running an IBM 8088, the standard deviation of the test results will not be that great. NOD32 and Avira are the fastest to boot as mentioned previously based on objective testing.

 

NOD32 2.xx is the lighter i have ever seen, also Avira.
I am interesting someone know how is Fortinet?

 

I don't know how you have done your own testing, because nothing beats drweb for lightness on a system.

Fpro and avg are the next closest rivals to this.

 

Dr. Web on the medium tier for boot speed and the lower tier for detection/protection.

 

Speaking strictly of system resource usage in my own experience, Dr. Web has definitely been the 'lightest' AV. Pretty much had no inclination if it even running. Second place would be awarded to AVG.

Scanning speed, boot time, etc would possibly change all that.

 

In no particular order: AVG Pro, AVG Anti-Malware, Virus Chaser, NOD32, Dr.Web........

 

Hi all,

I have only experience with freeware AV's. On default settings AVG showed to lowest impact on our hoem systems. Avast shows an increase when you limit the standard shields to only check at read and writes. AVG and Antivir free versions only perform read/write checks.

Today we use Avast free on a XP box, with the standard shield stopped. It is the only freebie with some light network IDS and Webscanning. On the Vista64 gaming box we have Avira free (best hueristics) with check only at writes.

On our XP box TreatFire with DefenseWall are so stong that an Antivirus is problably not nessecary. Due to the fact that we are behind a hardware firewall all software firewalls are disabled. With TF (outbound traffic initiation) and Avast (Network IDS lite) we have some network security. Nice thing about Avast's mail and webscanner is that it kills known malware before the can enter your computer.

Every month we backup our data and make an image copy. After making the new image copy (only 3 mins time) I set back the previous one and scan it with the updated Antivirus. This to make sure it is a clean bacup image (and giving the AV the chance to find any one month old 'zero day' malware with newer blacklist). In two years time I only found a malware once (xxx.wmv), but that was after a party at home when two friends had put a new screenimage with a porn actress on my test PC. When I noticed this I deleted the screensaver an gave no attention to it.

Because the Vista64 box has raid with caching writes are so fast the delay of Antivirs checking is not noticeable. That is what my son (gamer) wants. My wife (a safe surfer I presume) values 'fore checking' more, that is why she uses Avast in this way. On my test box I do not use an AV anymore (images are not backepd up anymore from the test box).

Regards

 

I agree with this. Dr Web takes up 13 meg (w/o SpiderMail) and uses 12 meg total RAM. The updates are also the smallest I have seen. NOD32 v3 uses 45+ megs of space and 30+ megs of memory. How is that light? If you're talking about CPU usage, Dr Web is light there too. I would like to see the defaults changes from 'all files' to 'selected files' on the SG settings.

 

I forgot I had tried Dr Web not too long ago. I must say, it's extremely light, and I could probably say better than avg.

 

yep, 6mb for the antivirus, and zero cpu usage.

updates are 15kb max and drweb only takes up 13mb on your harddrive.

medium tier for bootup?

dont think so.

 

Could someone point me in the direction of the "objective/empirical tests" regarding boot times? I would really like to see the results... and the methods used. Thanks!

 

I agree. Dr. Web is the lightest I've tried. Both in size and resources. Also, system proformance. Dr. Web is the only antivirus I can't "feel" running on my computer.

 

true, although avg is like this to me aswell.

now ive turned off the tray icon, sometimes i forget i have it installed.

*until sunday when my scheduled scan starts

 

LOL

 

Thanks a lot for the replies. It seems the consensus seems to converge around:

Avira, Dr.Web, NOD32 2.xx, AVG, and KIS, although I am not sure which version for the latter, and since it deals with more than antivirus, it might be a little off topic.

I would also like to see the empirical tests done by Bunkhouse Buck.

A few questions:

For those with experience with Dr. Web, how long do the most detailed scans tend to take? Of course this depends on the size of your HD and how much space is filled, amongst other things, so list that if you can.

One person mentioned that NOD32 3.0 was more impacting then 2.xx. I was wondering about how much slower it is. It might be a good package as a tradeoff for speed and detection, as I have consistently heard it has great detection.

For those mentioning Avira - are your experiences with the pay or free versions?

The one thing that turns me off from AVG is that the last time I used it, all of my email - which I have saved for nearly a decade - had a little note placed in it by the program. You can turn this off, but I can't figure out a way to remove it from past emails. Still, my experience has only been with AVG, Norton, and McAfee, and the latter two were very slow in comparison. But I understand they are usually slow and highly impacting on a system anyway.

 

for my machine, 40 minutes. In comparison to Nod32's 10 Minutes.

Drweb does a more-through scan, hence the slower speed.

 

Dr Web's on-demand scanner can be SLOW compared to other AVs.

BUT after the first full scan you can use the express Scan or tweak the settings to speed things up;deselect all files and/or archives in the settings.

 

Anyone?

 

yep, so true.

after 1xfull scan (40 mins my machine), i use Express scan from there-after (and thats all thats needed, no loss in security)

express scans are about 10 minutes, similar to a nod32 scan.

edit: i stand corrected, express scan on my machine is MUCH less.

Objects scanned: 6073
Infected objects found: 0
Objects with modifications found: 0
Suspicious objects found: 0
Adware programs found: 0
Dialer programs found: 0
Joke programs found: 0
Riskware programs found: 0
Hacktool programs found: 0
Cured: 0
Deleted: 0
Renamed: 0
Moved: 0
Ignored: 0
Scan speed: 4190 Kb/s
Scan time: 00:04:41

 

Well how about the lowest impact AV with better detection of the group?