Do Antiviruses Still Slow You Down?

[RILEYISMYNAME]

Norton, McAfee and other anti-malware programs used to hold our PCs back. But in 2020, do security apps still slow down your computer?

 

 

Some in-depth Anti-malware roundups: https://www.av-test.org/en/antivirus/home-windows/

[Sandro Linux]

I use an bitdefender and it does not slow my computer down much and has stopped a trojan from running on my sytem.

[r2724r16]

Common Sense > Antivirus Software

 

For most users anyways.

[Statik]

Malwarebytes + Common Sense = King.

 

 

That almost makes me want to disable windows defender..

[Alt Sudo]

Testing the impact of some of the next gen av solutions would be fun with products like Cylance, Carbon Black  and CrowdStrike.

[Lurick]

28 minutes ago, r2724r16 said:

Common Sense > Antivirus Software

 

For most users anyways.

Because you can SO easily detect the drive-by malware that have been seen embedded in advertisements on large and reputable sites in the past right? And EVERY user runs the same ad-blocking software as you right?

[wANKER]

6 minutes ago, Lurick said:

Because you can SO easily detect the drive-by malware that have been seen embedded in advertisements on large and reputable sites in the past right? And EVERY user runs the same ad-blocking software as you right?

 

I'm kinda fed up with the 'common sense' bandwagon. 

 

I think most people will be surprised at how sophisticated malware is, and I think only an arrogant or delusional person would think their common sense could trump it. 

 

Regardless of how aware and cautious you think you are, you will still have done something as simple like plugging your USB Flash Drive into another system without thinking about it 

[Lurick]

Just now, wANKER said:

 

I'm kinda fed up with the 'common sense' bandwagon. 

 

I think most people will be surprised at how sophisticated malware is, and I think only an arrogant or delusional person would think their common sense could trump it. 

 

Regardless of how aware and cautious you think you are, you will still have done something as simple like plugging your USB Flash Drive into another system without thinking about it 

Exactly!

Heck, I had an email slip through spam filters and I accidentally clicked the email instead of the delete icon, didn't open attachments or anything and instantly I had half a dozen notifications from Bitdefender of crap it blocked from trying to run on my system. Just by accidentally clicking on the email itself. I can only imagine what would have happened to a normal user just scrolling through email on their system and they happen to click on it out of curiosity. Things are not "simple" and "easy to see" as some people seem so insistent on putting it.

[manikyath]

so.. the conclusion is that norton 360 isnt notably slower than windows defender..

 

i am now considering putting norton 360 on my main box again.. because unlike defender, norton actually has configuration options.

[RejZoR]

I know this video is meant for the normies but as someone who worked with security software for 20 years and know their inner workings in-depth, it's pretty bad and almost borderline cringy. Along with a lot of explanations of things with antiviruses.

 

Also, Norton and McAfee are nowhere the most popular even though they come preloaded on many OEM systems and reason why people get rid of them basically straight away is because those on OEM systems are usually 3 month trials and I usually don't even bother with those 3 months because I know it'll be nagging the entire time during trial and die after end of trial. And those are usually fat suites of apps of which most people don't even want or need.

 

And thirdly, cut the Norton tropes already. Norton hasn't been shit for more than a decade and a half...

[captain_to_fire]

Years has passed and Linus still hasn't corrected his TQ video. Antivirus and anti-malware programs nowadays are just the same:

• They both use signatures of known malicious files by pattern matching
• They both use behavior monitoring should an unknown application match to a malicious behavior
• They both use a cloud infrastructure to offload scanning and check file reputation
• If the local AV can't immediately make a decision to run a file or not, both will lock the said file and upload it in the cloud

I mean, I made a thread just how to make Windows 10's in-house antivirus to be as good as third party ones. It's in my signature below.

 

[RejZoR]

24 minutes ago, captain_to_fire said:

Years has passed and Linus still hasn't corrected his TQ video. Antivirus and anti-malware programs nowadays are just the same:

• They both use signatures of known malicious files by pattern matching
• They both use behavior monitoring should an unknown application match to a malicious behavior
• They both use a cloud infrastructure to offload scanning and check file reputation
• If the local AV can't immediately make a decision to run a file or not, both will lock the said file and upload it in the cloud

I mean, I made a thread just how to make Windows 10's in-house antivirus to be as good as third party ones. It's in my signature below.

 

The whole antivirus/antimalware thing is the same as how most people in my country address pressure cleaners as "wap" (as in Wap brand) even though they actually mean one from Kärcher. I don't know how this is called in English, but there is a grammar rule in my language at least where something is used so widely it becomes a general term for certain thing, even if it's a copyrighted brand name or whatever. It's same with antiviruses in this case Antiviruses have been around for so long the name just stuck and they haven't really been exclusive at dealing with viruses for over 20 years. And even back then we knew they cover more stuff than just strictly viruses. Also people use blanket term "virus" for everything for as long as it does computer magic and hacks freaking alien spaceships somehow. Term virus actually strictly means only parasitic file infectors that actually behave very similarly to biological viruses. They execute, add their own code to executable files and when you execute those files it infects programs also running in memory by adding its code to those. And they were even corruptive just like real viruses. Most old viruses were clean at attaching their code so "disinfection" was usually rather straight forward. Virut virus however was a dirty one, probably because of dirty written buggy code infected things and made them irrecoverable. Sometimes file could be disinfected, but the output cleaned file wasn't 1:1 anymore with the original uninfected file.

[DJboutit]

I use a combo of SuperAnitSypware Rouge Killer and Iobit Advanced Systemcare and these program help keep my computer runnings smoothly.  Iobit Malware Fighter sucks it misses way to many thing search results I give it a 3.5 out of 10 Iobit other programs are really good.  I also use Mem Reduct to help keep my ran usage low I think one of my ram stick might be slowly going out but that is a whole another story.  R Kill is a must have if you know of have a virus and your trying to run a malware or virus scanner but the virus will not let you. 

 

[Luscious]

I was a heavy user of AVG's free version for MANY YEARS after going through both Norton and McAfee and even eset for a short time.

 

Then came the day when I simply had to disable AVG free because of the constant notifications, pop up, nagging me to upgrade to a paid version etc... all that happened after they "upgraded" the software to a newer version.

 

Did I ask to be upgraded? No. Did I want the upgrade? No. But AVG being the a-holes that they became FORCED the upgrade on users. No rolling back to earlier more quiet versions that simply worked in the background and didn't annoy you and waste your time. The real nail in the coffin came when AVG began interfering with legitimate software that I had running resulting in boot issues, instability, crashes and other glitches that I had to painstakingly trace back to my system settings. And the more complicated that startup sequence is with more software running the more easier it is for that AV to trip up over a completely normal process.

 

I know it's impossible to make AV 100% compatible with the millions of systems out there, but when your AV breaks legitimate software (not legitimate software breaking your AV) it's time to get off the AV hype bandwagon. Common sense is indeed underrated.

 

I am happily using Windows' built in protection and it is doing it's job. On those times when I do get something funky on my system a quick visit to malwarebytes fixes things up - but that has happened only once in maybe 6 years.

[skywake]

7 hours ago, r2724r16 said:

Common Sense > Antivirus Software

 

For most users anyways.

Not using Antivirus is like not backing up your important files. Of course if you're not super careless you can go for years without ever having to have actually needed it. But if you ever do need it the impact can be pretty huge. Sometimes things slip through the cracks or things that happen that are out of your control. Do you trust all the devices on your Home/Work/School LAN? Do you trust the machines you have to VPN to for work?

 

There's a reason why Antivirus exists, it's the same reason why if you talk to anyone even remotely connected to IT professionally they will (or should) rattle on about the importance backups. Shit happens and when it does it can be pretty devastating. The only reason you should ever be so flippant about things like backups and antivirus is if you have nothing to loose. And, well, I think we all have something to lose if our HDDs were wiped and accounts logged into.

[Allunia]

Where are the fps?

[OrangeX]

I've been using the Avira suite for 3 to 4 years which includes a VPN, Password manager and obviously an antivirus. The price is a bit high but it has saved me before from really sketchy mods for games. But I don't think anyone outside of Germany really knows of it or uses it.The only problem I have with it is that every time I download a game on Epic, it checks every file downloaded using 50%-70% of my CPU (doesn't happen on other launchers like Steam/Battle.net)

[scottyseng]

I've been running Norton and Symantec for well over a decade now without issues. As above, I've been saved a few times when I clicked on the wrong link by accident (instead of deleting, the mouse shifted). Sure scanning still takes CPU / drive speed, but that's sort of expected unless you have a mad NVMe setup. 

 

I kind of wished they would've tested more than three antivirus programs. I hear ESET is supposed to be one of the top programs to get now.

[SolarNova]

2 Easy steps to avoid having this problem entirely.

 

A) Dont do or have anything important stored on your main PC.

if u need a PC to do banking, store family photos, write letters, store personal details, use online accounts for shopping, etc, then use an old system or buy very cheap basic office PC, then install all the security you want, yes this system performance will be affected more by Security software, but it wont matter, ur not using the system for performance.

 

2) Run your main performance system with no security software.

Make a backup image of a clean install with drivers and ur own setup of default software.

This will avoid any performance drops. Additionally, you can install custom Windows installations stripped of data collection, monitoring, and other frivolous applications, tools and features to further speed up the system.

If any harmful software does make its way onto the system, just format and install the backup image.

"What about keyloggers getitng access to your gaming accounts?"

Thats what two factor authentication is for.

[RejZoR]

Antiviruses don't affect framerate. Period. You must really run a shit system for that to ever become a thing where scanning file traffic on system drains CPU so much it affects framerate because CPU is too busy scanning files. I didn't always have high end system like I do now, but I was always using antiviruses and I never experienced slowdowns with them. Hell, I still use ASUS Transformer with quad core Atom, 2GB RAM and eMMC storage and it works perfectly fine with avast! installed. Certainly faster than with Windows Defender which makes it crawl and beg for forgiveness every time I download a driver package in a single larger EXE package or just when I run my own shutdown timer every evening. With avast! it takes 1 second to launch the shutdown timer. With Windows Defender, literally many seconds with a pause so big it often crosses my mind whether I tapped on the icon with touch screen properly or not. Windows Defender has a good detection recently, but its performance is still the worst I've seen in entire industry in years. I don't recall any antivirus being this slow even if I look 15+ years in the past when rarely any used scan optimization techniques (like file scan caching), It only feels usable when you're in a sweet spot of having its scan cache properly populated. Once scan cache happens to get outdated and it has to physically rescan files, it's slow as fuck.

[Dat Guy]

20 hours ago, RILEYISMYNAME said:

in 2020, do security apps still slow down your computer?

Yes.

[Addnan]

is ublock the best way to stop viruses. probably.

[NumLock21]

This video made it look like to avoid antivirus like the plague, where finishing a task, took a few seconds longer (due to AV running in the background), is like as if their world is crumbling right before them. These days PC are so fast, even with multiple av programs installed, users won't mind having them, where they know they're protected. Who is this video target at, if it's targeting new techies, then it's not really helping, and it's sending a wrong message.

 

Can't wait for them to start telling everyone, not to install an antivirus program because it slows down your PC, because they watch this video, which makes them "Professionals".

 

I do find it funny, at 4:05 in that video, launching Steam with Norton 360 took 16.49 seconds, and without AV software, it took longer at 16.58 seconds.

[DSD27]

I use Avast, it doesn't slow down the OS and it has a game mode with an option to suspend all non-gaming user processes.

[CptPeterPL]

Hi Everybody,

I just watched the video and as my day job is Security Engineer for Big Data Companies so I have little bit different look at AV things. Couple of things I would like to comment:

 

1) Every AV solution is balance act between protection and performance. You want to be better protected = u will loose your performance. I can in 100% agree with even couple % performance lost in every serious AV product installed on PC. 

2) Product classification as Antivirus and Antimalware was pretty inaccurate as presented in video. 

3) I would love to see similar video with performance vs protection from LTT. Heck I would even love to share and compare results that we're making in corporate AV solutions. 

4) As people often suggest that no AV is not so bad thing I would recommend to compare it to current health situation. Can you go outside without protection and survive - Yes. Would you do it - No. You don't protect yourself for everyday casual situation. You are doing it for the sh*t hit the fan case. If you don't want to pay extra stay with MS Defender it's pretty good by now.