CPU core count vs antivirus scan speed

[Zaydoon]

Hi,

Does the number of cores/ threads affect antivirus scan speed for example (windows defender) providing that the core speeds are the same ?

Thank you

[Princess Luna]

while yes in a way not in the scaling way you may think... if you only have a dual core a virus scan need for system resources might get between other programs and applications also chewing up the resources, but past a normal quadcore there should already be enough for the scan to function without compromises.

 

Then what will matter the most is IPC + Frequency, the single thread performance like in games in a way, a virus scan is not something that multi-threads too much, so you'll benefit most from that stronger single core performance, for instance a Ryzen 7 1700 with its 8 cores and 16 threads will be slower than an i7 7700K with only 4 cores / 8 threads because the i7 already has enough to avoid choking and has the clear superior single thread performance.

[Zaydoon]

2 hours ago, Princess Cadence said:

while yes in a way not in the scaling way you may think... if you only have a dual core a virus scan need for system resources might get between other programs and applications also chewing up the resources, but past a normal quadcore there should already be enough for the scan to function without compromises.

 

Then what will matter the most is IPC + Frequency, the single thread performance like in games in a way, a virus scan is not something that multi-threads too much, so you'll benefit most from that stronger single core performance, for instance a Ryzen 7 1700 with its 8 cores and 16 threads will be slower than an i7 7700K with only 4 cores / 8 threads because the i7 already has enough to avoid choking and has the clear superior single thread performance.

So Basically, beyond 4 cores, scan speed depends on clock speed rather than core or thread count, am I right?

[Emberstone]

I would think antivirus scan speed is more dependent on disk read speed than anything else these days.