Antivirus with lowest CPU usage

[fyb3r]

MSE. I have MSE installed on all of my machines and the ~300 that I manage, including 2 machines that are running xp on a p4 and 512mb ram lol. You barely notice it running, and it actually does use signatures to actively scan the machine as anything is added to it.

The only way I can confirm this is through creating some payloads with Metasploit and moving them over to my windows 2012 server and as soon as I plug in the USB stick the payload is instantly removed and quarantined.

 

[DigDog]

it's really a toss between Avast and AVG - you can't go wrong with either of them (both free), and really, you can't go wrong with *any* antivirus nowadays, it's not like it's 1999 and Norton kills your PC. Besides, what sort of viruses is the OP worried about?

 

[Minerva]

Minerva, if all/most issues are caused by stupid behaviour, why do you have NoScript on your machine, and why does it eliminate 99% of the problem? NoScript also requires quite a bit more education than a heck of a lot of people would be willing to invest in.

I personally haven't had any malware issues in at least ten years, but I still run AV because I would look bloody silly if I inadvertently infected a load of customers' computers with malware because of poor security on my own computer.

Malware is sometimes delivered through advertising on legitimate sites, targeting vulnerabilities in up-to-date software.

I've known quite a few customers who were silly enough to open attachments or click on phishy links in e-mails, but the situation also isn't helped by the fact that Java is installed on pretty much every PC when it leaves the factory for no good reason, or an old version of Adobe Reader, or they leave the factory without half the available Windows updates.

I think anyone would have to be pretty foolish not to run AV or indeed any easy-to-use line of defence which doesn't inconvenience the user significantly.

You've answered your question already.

I also run noscript on my macs too. Why? Because it's nice not to worry about some random stupid sound playing on a website or getting those screen darkening pop unders. If you read news you will be stunned by the amount of trackers that they use. Clicking on the noscript icon, sometimes the menu goes all the way to the top of the screen and that's with 1880 vertical pixels!

AV is quite silly for the advanced user. For the numbskull that clicks on everything, sure but even so all of them will falter. Those fake 2013 Security programs have been installed on machines completely surreptitiously regardless of running Kaspersky, McAffee, Norton, etc.

If people are too lazy to learn how to use noscript properly, then they can deal with a slower machine and problems with malware, AND pay the price of not having their machine while it's being fixed, etc.

It's hard to fix stuck on stupid.

And for the counter argument of "how do you know if you're not infected if you don't run AV?" crowd, I've used all the great utilities over at bleepingcomputer.com and never have I found anything on my machines, ever.

Block ads, all of them, everywhere with an appliance or hosts file, DNS, etc. as well. That's a good start too.

 

[Lucas Prassas]

I don't know how much performance loss is a concern for y'all, but on otherwise decent proprietary machines (with integrated, uber low-mem GPUs) from eras past, even Avast causes enough desktop lag (on a fresh install of Win 7) to not be worth its moderate safety boost, IMO. CPU usage doesn't seem to be as much of a problem, when your literal 8mb of unnecessarily ancient VRAM and no non-PCI video adapter slots makes the display/animated elements of most applications slow you down considerably. I'm not qulaified to identify the threshold at which this becomes a real issue, but some light experimentation has made it seem quite likely that this is the primary issue on my computer, and it came with 1024MB of ddr2 ram(i think? stupid dxdiag arbitrarily making me download external diagnostic software to do what it has no reason to not do) and a default 2.80 GHz pentium 4, so it's not exactly a ridiculously awful computer for an utterly broke user like me.

EDIT: Minerva, is it just me, or does NoScript still have a tiny bit of an unnecessarily inconvenient design, for constant use (especially on a machine as incorrigibly inclined to periodically freeze as mine)? For any plugins you're not using all the time, I assume AdBlock+QuickJava or something similar should be just as good with JavaScript and such toggled off, if you're, say, reading an article on a page containing purely aesthetic visuals, or something comparable.

 

[Deders]

Probably not advisable to install 7 on a gpu with only 8MB. What happens if you disable Themes or Aero?

 

[Lucas Prassas]

Oh, I disabled as much as is conventionally advised, including many services, but I don't have a working drive or USB boot (BIOS too old; newest version doesn't support it, either), or I'd be using an ultra-efficient Linux distro like Lucid Puppy and some of the other portable, but sufficiently desktop-like ones, since I don't play games often, especially non-indie ones.

 

[Wolfpup]

MSE. I have MSE installed on all of my machines and the ~300 that I manage, including 2 machines that are running xp on a p4 and 512mb ram lol. You barely notice it running, and it actually does use signatures to actively scan the machine as anything is added to it.

The only way I can confirm this is through creating some payloads with Metasploit and moving them over to my windows 2012 server and as soon as I plug in the USB stick the payload is instantly removed and quarantined.

Yeah, I've had very good luck with MSE, and have replaced Symantec's product with it on one system in particular that's very old.

I think the reality is if something can't even run MSE, it's way past time to upgrade. If it can't run MSE, it can't run Vista or newer anyway, and is months away from being a complete security disaster as Microsoft kills XP support.

If the hardware is good enough to run Vista or better, it's going to be plenty good to run MSE (or Windows Defender in 8).

I do have one horrible old system that I've had to set up some exceptions for to get it to run reasonably well, but Symantec at least was much slower, and MSE is a very light weight program.

 

[John Connor]

MSE is light weight and not worth a damn!

 

[nemesismk2]

MSE is light weight and runs very quickly

 

[John Connor]

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-security-essentials-loses-av-test-certificate

 

[Entropism]

Not to mention:

http://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-security-essentials-provides-baseline-protection

Holly Stewart, senior program manager of the Microsoft Malware Protection Center, has told Dennis Technology Labs in an interview that Security Essentials is intended to provide "baseline" protection and recommended that users install an anti-virus on top of it for better security from advanced threats.

 

[John Connor]

Now that is such crap! If you run two anti-virus programs they can counter act each other. Just install Bitdefender free and be done with it.

 

[mikeymikec]

She wasn't quoted as saying that people should run two anti-virus products. She is quoted saying what I call the "when used as part of a balanced diet" strategy that dietary supplement companies use on their packaging. It's probably one of the most honest things that the maker of a piece of security software can say, as opposed to the standard line/implication "our piece of software will provide you with complete protection!" that most makers of security software use to sell their products.

If you have one layer of security on your computer, then an attack only has to overcome line layer of security. If your security is multi-layered (this does not necessarily mean multiple anti-virus packages), then there are potentially more layers of defence to defend against attacks.

And read up about what av-test regards to be inadequate security before parrotting their opinion around please. Berryracer has brought it up enough times and there have been enough critical responses to enlighten you if you can't figure it out yourself.

- edit - I've even posted on this thread about it already:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35430536&postcount=48
Which links to this one as well:
http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=35154822&postcount=6

While I use and recommend MSE, the threat that I see it posing is that because it's free with no strings attached, it is a far more attractive option and could annihilate the competition, leaving one piece of anti-virus software in the market, which creates a field day for malware designers. Diversity is definitely a good thing.

 

[Engineer]

I've been using AVG but just moved one PC to Bitdefender FREE edition to try out (anyone know how much better full Bitdefender is than the free one?). My TWC speedtest pings lowered from 31ms to 24ms on this PC. Loading seems to be about the same so far. Will try on another PC to see there is a difference.

Edit: The above results may not be accurate as I just tested the other PC and it tested 34ms (3 consecutive times). I then rebooted it without doing anything and it tests 22ms now. I'll see what it tests with Bitdefender and without anything too.

Edit #2: Back to AVG. Bitdefender gave me fits...long lags at times. Even just opening up the browser stopped for a second (not much but did pause). The search for the best continues.

 

[John Connor]

No problems using Bitdefender here. I'm not sure what the difference between the free version and the paid version is, but I do know Bitdefender has a high detection rate and will block a web page from loading if it should contain a virus that it has a definition for.

 

[Engineer]

No problems using Bitdefender here. I'm not sure what the difference between the free version and the paid version is, but I do know Bitdefender has a high detection rate and will block a web page from loading if it should contain a virus that it has a definition for.

Yea, don't know. Worked OK on the Xeon system (non RAID) but my 3770 system (RAID) wasn't acting right. The boot would hang for about 45 seconds before finally getting to the desktop and everything lagging (I could actually feel it). One thing I noticed (which I've never liked) is that bitdefender captured the entire streaming of the internet before it would release it (i.e. if I were doing a speed test, I would not see the hand move until the test was complete - I guess that is the best way to capture and sniff an entire stream though).

Back to AVG for now and all seems fine again.