Effective and Light Solution?

First of all, I want to remind you that I"m not aiming at a AV1 vs AV2 thread, but rather helpful recommendations for my security.

I just got a new PC and I am a huge gamer, that means that I need a light and effective AV.

Check out my questions and add your answers/suggestions :

1. I head many positive reviews about PrevX! I've never used it, but it's not an AV I think. More of a cloud scanner and behaviour analyser or sth...is it enough to run it as my only security product?

2. Are those gaming AVs actually working? I mean is the Gaming Edition of Norton AV or Bitdefender really lighter?

3. Is GData AV 2010 a system hog for you and too heavy for gamers?

And in general, which AV would you recommend for me? Please dont start the AV vs AV war, to let me gather many opinions!

Thx in advance !

 

avast! with prevx is light combination with some false positives but good. sandboxie for surfing..... all free

gdata is heavy in my experience

 

I think Prevx is just fine. It's good protection with very little footprint.
I think you should rather go to NIS 2009 than Norton Gaming edition, as I think they are almost the same.

 

dont buy in the gamer versions. there isnt much difference.

 

Thanks guys! I am thinking about either buying an AV (such as Kaspersky and Avira) or PrevX. I am not a big fan of security combinations since I don't need any kind of software firewalls nor Mail/CreditCard Protection. I had many bad experiences with AV combos and I just try not to use this method again.

Would it be a better choice to get my hands on PrevX as my only security product? Or should I rely on the traditional ways of an Antivirus? I want a light and effective solution, so please consider that as well

Thanks again for taing your time! All comments are appreciated!

 

I(just my opinion) recommend that you should atleast have an antivirus for just on demand scanning. Maybe Avira Free without the real-time guard, and for real-time: Prevx.

 

Heh heh, you have an easy solution friend. If you are only gaming, and don't care about anything else because you don't do anything such as banking etc, you can have an easy solution. What you need is ShadowDefender or Returnil. I have been playing with these for a bit now. They are easy to use and easy to understand.

Consider, that you have CoD4 and WoW installed. You play both. You use SD or Rnil and 'freeze' your system. But, you make exceptions to your game profile folders, so your progress and experience are not lost in each game. You want light resources? Either of these programs are very light.

If you do by chance get a bug, just reboot. The worst case scenario is your profile for each game gets borked for some reason. But, I am sure since you are an avid gamer, you do have those profiles and your configs backed up somewhere, right?

If gaming fast and furious is your thing, and you don't need to worry about all the other things such as data theft or your photo collection getting deleted due to malware or virii, you have it easy.

But don't just take my opinion for it, try those programs out and see for yourself. All you need to do is reboot without protection to put OS updates or things like that on. Others may worry about how exposed you will be if you have to do that. But I myself would just download the patch or update or whatever to a directory that is excluded from the 'freezing', then disable my NIC and reboot without being 'froze'. Then I would install the update/patch and then 'freeze' the OS again, enable the NIC, and zoom zoom boom boom.

Sul.

 

No need to worry about data theft? Many games today have user accounts with passwords that are not uncommon to be targeted by malware authors. Some games even have a monthly fee that is dependent on your user account. There is a chance that you will lose the game completely(€/£/$)if your game account gets stolen.

 

I suggest you buy Prevx and add a free AV - both AntiVir or Avast are great options. So you'll get good security without having to pay too much.

You could also consider running under a Limited User Account I think.

 

If you are a heavy gamer your computer also might be of hi-specs(RAM,GPU...)
so i dont think any AV will slow your computer down.
I suggest Norton AntiVirus 09 only nothing more than that.
I am avid gamer myself and use only Norton on my gaming PC.

 

KIS has a gaming mode built-in and does not interfere with my games. Avira blocks gameguard supported games, eset blocks people connecting to you by default.

 

im a heavy gamer and use everything in my sig with no slowdowns and ive ran 2 games at once on occassion without issue my comp might be a bit stronger but avast is the best FREE AV to have if ur a gamer, ther might be better paid products wen it comes to resource consumption but of all the AVs ive used (and ive used basically everyone i can think of). NOD32, Norton and Avast are he best choices for an AV for gamers, with Avira in 2nd IMO. i wuldnt dream of using any other AV than the ones ive listed on a gaming rig personally.

 

Exactly, I own a high end computer at the moment, and I want it to stay that way without giving too much pressure with a heavy program. I think I'll go for PrevX, it really seems to be a light and strong application. Norton and Kaspersky are good products as well, but I personally just demand absolutely no lags and performance problems during gameplay

EDIT: Also, if I am sitting behind a router with a firewall, do I still need a software firewall? I will have Vista's firewall activated, so PrevX or an AV should be enough, right?

 

I agree with Someone. The paid version of prevx in conjunction with a free AV would make a great combination. In addition to the free versions of Antivir and Avast - both very good AVs - you could also consider Microsoft Security Essentials. I'm currently running the MSE beta in conjunction with prevx (paid) on my system and the two are running very light together with no problems at all.

The Vista firewall in conjunction with the router should be fine. You don't need a separate third-party software firewall.

 

Thank you guys! All your comments are very very useful and clear, Wilders has helped me once again! Great community, great members!

 

I have run many, many different setups over the years and have found Prevx is the lightest of them all - in fact, it imposes no overhead what so ever.

You do not need an AM / AV / AS etc if you have Prevx - it has about the best detection out there.

I run Prevx with Zemana Antilogger HIPS to give more protection - again, this is ultra light and very effective.

Stick with windows firewall if you are behind a NAT router.

Puss

 

Hi Puss!

Really interesting! Is PrevX really that powerful? The only weakness of Prevx is the necessity to be connected to the internet almost 24/7 to ensure 100% detection, while offline it doesn't protect you at all.

cheers!

 

its good but it wont ever give u 100% detection...

 

Nothing gives 100%, but I would argue Prevx gives pretty much unbeatable protection against real threats compared to most AMs.

I and some associates have tested prevx alongside several AMs with simple on demand tests using new (<72 hour) malware and Prevx consistantly out performs all the usual players and sits at the top with A2 and Avira

These are not just one off tests, but have been run abot once / week, using sample sizes from 50 - 2000 over more than six months. whilst not 100% scientific and rigorous as testing could be, I think Prevx out performs Avira now on new malware and is as good as A2. These three are significantly better than Norton, KAV, F-Secure, NOD etc etc.

In terms of offine protection..... Im never offline. If you are offline, you have very limited means by which you can get infected anyway!

Puss.

 

Thanks Puss! Will go buy it now...

and I've decided to give Twister a second chance on my new PC. I hope Twister as on-demand scanner and PrevX as realtime protection will work smoothly together.

ill tell you the results!

 

If you want to check for compatibility, go to the Prevx forum here at Wilders and ask Joe if he will set up a one week license for you - best to try before you buy.

On another note - if you are after an on demand scanner, try Hitman Pro - is another clout scanner. It will scan your system in about one min and is very good. Its free to scan and if you find an infection, you can then activate the one month trial which allows removal.

Puss

 

You could also look at the ideas around the Limited User Account ( LUA ) and SRP Threads on this site.

No overhead at all, as far as I know.

And have a look at Rmus posts on how infections occurs , especially the drive by downloads.

In theory section
If you only install the original manufacturers CD/CVD for a desktop game , and then only use the internet for approved patchs from the manufacturers website , in theory , you could possibly get away with only a windows FW and say opera.

But be clear on the what risks are before going this route

 

One other AV/AS that is truly light on resources is Vipre.

I would recommend giving it a free trial and see for yourself. I feel it is a terrific AV and is extremely efficient.

 

Free: Avira or Avast, heuristics set to high. (False positives are better than false negatives.) For Avira, use SRP to disable the stupid popup window. Don't use AVG, it's worthless.

Alternative free: PCTools Firewall and Threatfire make a pretty good HIPS solution when combined.

Nonfree: No idea.

If you run as administrator, I would recommend using Pretty Good Security or something like it for net-facing applications. If not, I would recommend using SuRun, which is awesome. Unfortunately, stupid design in a lot of games makes running as anything but admin impossible, which sucks.

Also, Sandboxie may be a good addition if you run as admin. Not sure how many games run in sandboxes though. Also, Sandboxie IMHO should fall under shareware, not freeware.