We used a 5400 RPM, 2.5” hard drive (rather than a more enthusiast-oriented) conventional SSD specifically to slow down our test times and magnify any differences that the AV products might be exerting on storage operations. In the same vein, this is also why needed a higher caliber of timing tools. A simple stopwatch is too imprecise for several of these tests. Instead, we turned to Microsoft’s Windows Performance Analysis toolkit. The need for this should be clear from the following Microsoft data (found in http://bit.ly/oOg71J):
System Configuration | Manual Testing Variance | Automated Testing Variance |
|---|---|---|
High-end desktop | 453 000 ms | 13 977 ms |
Mid-range laptop | 710 246 ms | 20 401 ms |
Low-end netbook | 415 250 ms | 242 303 ms |
We combined methodology suggestions from AVG, GFI, McAfee, and Symantec to arrive at our final test set as described below.
1. Install time. Using Windows PowerShell running with admin rights, we measured the installation time of LibreOffice 3.4.3 with this command:
$libreoffice_time=measure-command {start-process "msiexec.exe" -Wait -NoNewWindow -ArgumentList "/i .\libreoffice34.msi /qn"}
$libreoffice_time.TotalSeconds
2. Boot time. We used Windows Performance Analyzer’s xbootmgr and xperf tools to measure time elapsed across five looping boot cycles. Our score shows the mean time of the five cycles. Our command was:
xbootmgr –trace boot –prepSystem –numruns 5
3. Standby time. We used Windows Performance Analysis xbootmgr and xperf tools to measure time elapsed across five looping standby cycles. Our score shows the mean time of the five cycles. Our command was:
xbootmgr –trace standby –numruns 5
4. Synthetic performance. Our only conventional benchmark in this group, we used PCMark 7 to illustrate performance across a range of conventional computing tasks.
5. Page loads. We selected the following element-dense pages and used HTTPWatch to measure their load times in Internet Explorer 9.
6. Scan time. This time, a simple stopwatch would do, although most AV vendors display their scanning run times within the application. Given the time scale involved, we felt confident simply using these rougher tools. Because many vendors cache scanned files, we’ve broken out data for the first full scan and a mean value of three subsequent scans. The test system was rebooted between each scan.
- 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.