Antivirus suitable for gaming

I don't think as there is any Antivirus which will make slow to a single program just because of being a game. Antivirus doesn't treat gaming files separately unless they are virus spreading ones.

BitDefender 2011 is supposed to be a high rated anti-virus, has a gaming mode, I think Zone Alarms Security is good also and has a gaming mode! I used it before, but not for a while! D-Link Routers has some gaming routers with game fuel technology and a panel display for Hardware!

Any AV that allows you to specify which folders and files to ignore. Then, configure it to ignore your game installation folders if you have a perf or blockage problem.

My favorite free AV is Avast. www.avast.com. Free automatic updates.

Yes geek..I use avast and never had to do anything to it....
I play lots of games...BFBC2, GRAW, GTA4, FSX and never had a problem....
I've also never had a virus ever get by the online defenses that avast has in place!!!
It litterally shuts off your connection if it picks up a trojan/virus attached to a website!!!
Try it you'll like it...JQ

I think he's talking about an AV program that is sensitive to when the users doing competitive gaming. Nothing can destroy your day like being in the middle of a high speed FPS match when suddenly your system starts chugging and sputtering along which in-turn cause's your frame rates to drop to sh!t and your screen to get choppy. The culprit is almost always an antivirus program deciding to start scanning all sorts of stuff.

Heuristics tend to be CPU intensive as they must perform complex algorithms to compare code inside files to potential virus signatures. To add insult to injury the virus AV program must open thousands of files causing your CPU to task switch into privileged mode to process all the I/O requests for the file handles. AV programs tend to do all this through a kernel mode driver that they put in during installation, your game is running in user mode and thus is trumped by the kernel mode driver. No amount of priority increase's will allow a user mode program to take cpu time from a kernel mode driver, and thus our unlucky gamer is stuck in lagged hell.

This is where "gaming mode" comes in on some AV programs. They can either detect the execution of a specific file, or are manually put in this mode. In this mode they'll be very slow and careful about opening new file handles and sending privileged instructions to the CPU through their kernel mode driver.

Avast does have a game mode...that's why so many people use it....
But if I was competing in a tournament I would scan bevore the match, suspend the av program during the match and then re-activate and scan after the match...
I persoanally play 20 to 30 hours a week and never have I had a slow down or lag from my av program.
JQ

*virus found, danger danger, Trojan435-password stealer. Quarantine ineffective. Need to ask user permission to delete affected files before information is sent to China.... but i'd hate to interrupt his game so I will wait..."

Anyway, Avast does have a game mode. Symantec AV is pretty unintuitive as well.

Microsoft Secuirty Essentials is the best free one I've used. I also run Malwarebytes along with it.

Here here, + 1

This topic has been moved from the section Business Computing to section Applications by CompTIA_rep

http://www.bitdefender.com/solutions/internet-security....

has a nice game mode!

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