We’ve hit the highlights in terms of time and system performance considerations here, although there are a few loose ends. For instance, AV product installation could be an issue. Most products install fairly quickly and smoothly, but some may be less intuitive than others in guiding you through an initial definitions update.
For instance, initial setup with GFI Vipre was slightly unusual. The program installed normally and requested a reboot, which we did. Upon resuming, Vipre did its usual thing and had us download a definition update, which took about three minutes or so and requested another reboot. However, upon our next return to the application, the main UI still showed that Active Protection was not enabled, even though it looked to be so in the options, and we appeared to have still not implemented a definition update. So we polled for new definitions again, and this time the download took over 20 minutes on our 15 Mb/s FiOS downlink. But once obtained, the new definitions installed quickly and resulted in both the Updates and Active Protection icons changing to green check marks. Good to go.
Another potential time sink comes after the scan when you assess results. Symantec excels at finding tracking cookies, regardless of whether you consider these important (the program’s options will let you filter out certain threat types, if you’re really annoyed). Our initial scan found 22 tracking cookies while, for example, McAfee found four. Do we care? Not really, and we’d rather not have to consider if the “threat” is worth worrying about. We use AV products in part to make such decisions for us.
As for impact on CPU utilization, all products seem to be fairly even, falling in the 4% to 11% range. We found that McAfee edged a bit higher, trending in the 10% to 15% range, which could explain some of the company’s lower scanning times, although we’re still baffled by that first deep scan score. One likely reason why AVG performs so quickly in scanning is that it will ratchet into high priority mode when your system goes idle. When you return, the app reverts to low priority mode.

In retrospect, we have to wonder if it was a mistake to run these tests on a modern quad-core processor (Core i7-2600K). In reality, the CPU is so fast that it’s hard to register a significant load from even the most demanding AV apps. In our opinion, that’s the big message of this article. We’ve seen some AV companies trumpet CPU utilization scores showing how much less impact their product has than others. Apparently, this is somewhat like saying you can boil water at 230 degrees Fahrenheit instead of 260 degrees. As long as the water is at 212 degrees or higher, no one really cares. What might have once been a serious concern in the single-core days, or even still on low-end, low-power processors, is no longer a worry on modern platforms. The load from any of these AV products is negligible with such horsepower under the hood.
On that basis, we conclude that, in most cases, performance may be a secondary concern when selecting an antivirus product, but it shouldn’t be one of your first criteria.
- Antivirus Need...and Greed
- Contenders: AVG And GFI
- Contenders: Kaspersky And McAfee
- Contenders: Microsoft And Symantec
- How We Tested: Configuration
- How We Tested: Benchmarking
- Application Installation
- Boot Time
- Standby Time
- PCMark 7 Results
- PCMark 7 Results, Continued
- Web Page Load Time
- Scanning Time
- Do Antivirus Suites Have A Big Impact On Performance?

i think something is wrong with your numbers.
Also, the timing of this article was excellent. I had just been doing some research about what anti-virus software I should switch to, mainly based on performance, but I guess I just got all the information I needed.
I stopped using AV products on my personal systems back in 2003. Norton back then was god-awful on a Pentium 4 systems, seemingly crushing the life out of a system. Even with a first generation WD Raptor 36GB my P4 2.6 would choke not only with Norton, but also McAfee. I might not use AV software, but I do put it on my family members' systems when it doesn't kill performance. In that respect these modern solutions seem much better.
>>Apparently, this is somewhat like saying you can boil water at 230 degrees Fahrenheit instead of 260 degrees. As long as the water is at 212 degrees or higher, no one really cares.
i think something is wrong with your numbers.
I had kaspersky on my intel i7-920 system with a SSD app/boot drive, and kaspersky brought my system to it's knees compared to a clean system without any antivirus. It was like a computer from 7 years ago in it's response time. Try to install something? Took 10 seconds to start the pre-scan, then it would pre-scan and then install was slower. Run firefox from a fresh boot? Wait 3 seconds. 3 seconds? With a SSD?
I removed it and tried out norton internet security and everything is instant like my clean system. I don't even notice that I have it most of the time. I attribute that partially to my good system, but I attribute the other part to it not just adding arbitrary wait times onto everything I try to do. Use that processor! I have multiple more to spare!
I know people think dirty of Norton, but as long as it protects me while pretty much being invisible to my performance to the naked eye, I'll give the once slow kid in the class if he's a genius now. I don't know why, but it works.
Tom's something is wrong with your test bench.
If anyone is interested, I did ran my own tests for most of the latest security suites and have reached to the conclusion that Avast 6 is the fastest around. A scan on 10 GB of data on an SSD took ~2 minutes , compared to 8 minutes it that took Kaspersky to finish the same job.
I agree that Avira free should have also been included to balance the field a little bit.