- Antivirus software is notorious for slowing down computers
to the point where, without even thinking about it, it's the first thing that
I remove when I get a new system with, you know, McAfee, or Norton pre installed on it, but while anti malware apps
have grown in sophistication, along with the nefarious programs
they're intended to fight, modern computers are also
a lot faster than the Pentium 166 MHz that I was
running when I formed that habit. So then, is running
antivirus in the background still like driving around
with the handbrake on? Wow, that sounds horrible. Horrible, unlike our sponsor. Thermal Grizzly! Thermal Grizzly's
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CPU cool at the link below. (upbeat music) (music fades out) To understand why security software would have any effect on system speed, we need a little bit of background. As I talked about in this
Fast As Possible episode from, 2014, antivirus and anti malware software, are not quite the same thing. Antivirus programs primarily focused on garden variety bad guys, like viruses, worms, trojans, and key loggers. And they would run
constantly in the background so that nothing could slip through, sapping precious system resources
that could have been used to render Lara Croft's, (clears throat) tank top in more detail. But because antiviruses
focused more on a specific set of known threats, they could
miss some newer malware. Kind of like that famous
attention experiment with the gorilla. That is where anti
malware programs came in. They were designed to
do periodic deeper scans of the entire system looking
for patterns of behavior, or for symptoms that might
indicate an infection, rather than a specific
identifiable nefarious program. These deep background scans, obviously take up some CPU usage, and especially in the days
of mechanical hard drives, would cause your disc to thrash around, reducing system responsiveness
while they were running. Making matters worse, most
good anti malware suites, included antivirus features, like real time threat monitoring, and downloaded file scanning, so that's like a textbook
triple resource hogging whammy. On top of that, as the
types and numbers of malware expanded, so did the
databases of known threats, so it took more and
more time and resources to check through a list that was growing longer
than a CVS receipt. That is why PCs were slowed down by security applications in the past, but how bad is it today? To find out we ran some
tests, choosing a few common security apps, and without protection. You know, as a control. Our test setup was designed
to be representative of a high performance gaming rig, but one from a few years ago, and we ran it with, and
without Windows security, the built in protection that
as far as we know has a fairly minimal performance impact. We also used two of the most
dread inducing anti malwares to ever haunt the prebuilts
and laptops of PC enthusiasts; McAfee, and Norton. (angry computer noises) We focused on mundane everyday activities. You know, how long it
takes to download, install, and launch an app. Unzipping, transferring
files, and booting windows. That sort of thing. We also ran a handful of more enthusiast performance benchmarks, and there are actually a few surprising findings in our results. First up, is that a modern quad-core CPU should be enough to handle
basic background scanning. Our gaming tests were pretty much a wash, and our worst outlier in Cinebench, compared to our control was McAfee, with only about a three
percent performance difference. Here is what blew my mind though. Even with a PCI Express and DM SSD, workloads that hit both CPU and storage were almost across the board slower
with anti malware running, than without, and both Norton and McAfee had measurably higher performance impacts, compared to Windows Defender. Unzipping a file took 35% longer with Norton installed on the system, compared to our baseline, and launching Adobe Premiere Pro, was anywhere from 5 to 30%
slower with Windows Defender, and 25 to 35% slower
with McAfee and Norton, compared to nothing at all. Nothing at all, nothing at all. Lttstore.com. Granted, in most cases this
equated to just a few seconds, but percentage wise it's
just way more than I expected to the point where I think
there is still a strong justification for the
outrage about system builders bundling the software, especially
on entry level machines. I mean, even places where I didn't expect it to matter at all. Like, I would have told
Riley not to bother with a file transfer speed test, we ended up seeing a shocking impact. All of our anti malwares were within a few seconds of our control when we were transferring
a one gigabyte file to a server on our local network. But remember, that's a
scenario where the bottleneck is our ethernet connection. When transferring to a local SSD, the difference was eight
seconds with Norton, and over 12 seconds with McAfee
running in the background. What the actual f- (bleep) In fairness though, this
is a lot better than things used to be, where a scan
would start in the background and you would literally go
and make some hot chocolate or something while you
wait for a game to fire up. So, how have we gotten here? Well first off, as I
mentioned, PCs have gotten exponentially more capable then
they were when I was a kid, and tasks that used to take up a significant portion of the CPUs power, now take a fraction of a percent. Second, remember those big malware databases we were talking about? Well they used to be
hosted locally, on your PC, but now anti malware companies
host them in the cloud, where servers can take
some of the processing giving your personal computer
some sweet sweet relief. Mitigating some more of the
performance sucking effects, the first time that we launched an app, or downloaded a file, or did whatever, it actually took longer
than subsequent tests. This makes sense, since once that app, or that process has been scanned, the security software knows
that it's probably still safe the next time that you launch it. And it's nice that this
feature worked because even if there is a
performance impact initially, at least it doesn't carry
on scanning the same thing, slowing slowing down every
task, every single time. So in conclusion then, we're not saying; "Hey, go bareback, it's
great, you're gonna love it" protection is important,
especially for people who engage in high risk behavior online. We're just saying that this video has definitely inspired us to
be more cognizant of our background tasks, because even ones that I have
generally come to accept as just part of the package,
like Windows Defender, could be a digital boat anchor
on your PCs performance. If you want to learn more about this, there are entire websites
dedicated to exhaustive anti malware testing, so if you have a few seconds, and those few seconds matter to you, we're gonna have some
links in the description so you can check out which
ones will let you stay secure, and speedy at the same
time, like some kind of tortoise-hare hybrid. Not sure anybody wants that, at least not as much as they
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they've got a free trial. So check them out at the link
in the video description. Don't wait, it's great. Speaking of great, if
you enjoyed this video, maybe check out our- hey, we did a bold stuff
that manufacturers say. Normally I would say the actual word and just bleep it in post, but my sons here watching
me record right now so that's why I'm not doing that, but we did one of those, you know, some
things manufacturers say about Windows game mode and
whether it makes a difference. I'm gonna link that one down below
Hello,
There is so much bad information in that video I don't know where to start.
Anti-virus and anti-malware software are the exact same thing. They are just terms used by the marketing departments of various security software providers to brand their technology differently in order to sell it. The "explanation" given sounds like it is attempting to discuss signature-based scanning (a technique already on the way out when I left McAfee Associates in 1995) and HIPS, but seems cribbed from too many press releases to be certain.
There is no mention of the versions of the McAfee, Microsoft or Norton Lifelock software used, or how they were configured. Nor, for that matter, is the version of the operating system mentioned. Were all the tests run under Windows 10? If so, what edition? Even amongst the same versions of Windows there is a great deal of variation. Compare Windows 10 Version 1509 versus Version 1909.
For the system being run with "no security software," how was this accomplished? Consumer versions of Windows 10, for example, do not provide an official means of disabling the security software. If you are not running a third-party security program, than Windows Defender automatically is enabled by the operating system.
There's no specific mention of the software and versions used in performing the various tests, how many times the tests were run (in order to provide an average) or programs used measure and verify their results. I saw Cinebench R20, Furmark (I think, it was never specifically mentioned, but a screenshot sure looked like it), Photoshop, Premiere Pro, Steam, and VLC called out, but the versions as well as the operations performed can make a difference. As for unzipping files, downloading files, copying files, etc., were these done using Windows Explorer? A third-party program or tool? Was it a multi-threaded or single-threaded application? What was the mixture of files being used? Were their nested archives? These are the types of things you have to look at.
And while the video did reference one reputable security software tester, they are many other reputable testers as well. Look at a variety of test results in order to determine which are valid and most applicable to how you use your computer. If one tester tests using office productivity apps in their benchmarks and you are primarily a gamer (or vice-versa), you may not be getting the best data to make an informed decision.
Testing security software is something even experts make mistakes doing, and a video like this one (or the companion discussion here on the videographer's website do not provide enough information about how the tests were performed to prove their credibility.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
A good summary.
For those wanting to see the performance impact of specific AVs - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwlmwthE3M03plStqNMqbHJm_1HpeucV6
What's good overall? Bitdefender or Avira?
I know a lot of you will prefer bitdefender, I've installed Bitdefender; but got to know about Avira antivirus (from a link in this Linus' video description)
Yes don't forget they give u death of bluescreen