Performance dec 2010

Anti-Virus Comparative

Performance test
Impact of Anti-Virus Software on System Performance

Language: English
November 2010
Last Revision: 13th December 2010

www.av-comparatives.org

Anti‐Virus Comparative – Performance Test – November 2010 www.av‐comparatives.org

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 3

2. Tested products 3

3. Test methods 4

4. Side notes and comments 5

5. Test results 7

6. Summarized results 15

7. Certification levels reached in this test 16

8. Copyright and Disclaimer 17
‐ 2 ‐


Introduction

We want to make clear that the results in this report are intended to give only an indication of the
impact on system performance (mainly by the real-time/on-access components) of the various Anti-
Virus products in these specific tests. Users are encouraged to try out the software on their own PCs
and form an opinion based on their own observations.

Tested products

The following products1, which were available in mid November, were evaluated (with default set-
tings) in this test:
avast! Free 5.0 Kingsoft Antivirus 2011
AVG Anti-Virus 2011 McAfee VirusScan Plus 2011
AVIRA AntiVir Premium 10.0 Microsoft Security Essentials 1.0
BitDefender Antivirus 2011 Norman Antivirus & Anti-Spyware 8.0
eScan AntiVirus 11.0 Panda Antivirus Pro 2011
ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4.2 PC Tools Spyware Doctor with AV 8.0
F-Secure Anti-Virus 2011 Sophos2 Anti-Virus 9.5
G DATA AntiVirus 2011 Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2011
K7 TotalSecurity 10 Trend Micro Titanium Antivirus 2011
Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2011 TrustPort Antivirus 2011

Please note that the results in this report apply only to the products/versions listed above and should
not be assumed comparable to (e.g.) the versions provided by the above listed vendors as part of a
product suite. Also, keep in mind that different vendors offer different (and differing quantities of)
features in their products.

The following activities/tests were performed:

 File copying
 Archiving / Unarchiving
 Encoding / Transcoding
 Installing / Uninstalling applications
 Launching applications
 Downloading files
 PC Mark Vantage Professional Testing Suite

1
Versions chosen by the vendors.
2
Sophos is an enterprise product.

‐ 3 ‐


Test methods

The tests were performed on an Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 machine with 2GB of RAM and SATAII hard
disks. The performance tests were first done on a clean Microsoft Windows 7 Professional (32-Bit)
system and then with the installed Anti-Virus software (with default settings).

The hard disk was defragmented before starting the various tests, and care was taken to minimize
other factors that could influence the measurements and/or comparability of the systems (network,
temperature, etc.). Optimizing processes/fingerprinting used by the products were also considered –
this means that the results represent the impact on a system which has already been used by the user
for a while. The tests were repeated several times (with and without fingerprinting) in order to get
mean values and filter out measurement errors. After each run the workstation was defragmented and
rebooted. We simulated various file operations that a computer user would execute: copying3 different
types of clean files from one place to another, archiving and unarchiving files, encoding and trans-
coding 4 audio and video files, converting DVD-Files to IPOD format, downloading files from Internet,
launching applications, etc. We make use of windows automation software to replicate the activities
and measure the times.

We also used a third-party industry recognized performance testing suite (PC Mark Vantage Profes-
sional Edition) to measure the system impact during real-world product usage. Readers are invited to
evaluate the various products themselves, to see how they impact on their systems (such as software
conflicts and/or user preferences, as well as different system configurations that may lead to varying
results).

Anti-Virus products need to load on systems at an early stage to provide security from the very begin-
ning – this load has some impact on the time needed for a system to start up. Measuring boot times
accurately is challenging. The most significant issue is to define exactly when the system is fully
started, as many operating environments may continue to perform start-up activities for some time
after the system appears responsive to the user. It is also important to consider when the protection
provided by the security solution being tested is fully active, as this could be a useful measure of
boot completion as far as the security solution is concerned. Some Anti-Virus products are loading
their services very late (even minutes later) at boot (users may notice that after some time that the
system loaded, the system gets very slow for some moments), so the system looks like loading very
fast, but it just loads its services later and makes the system also insecure/vulnerable. As we do not
want to support such activities, we still do not measure boot times.

To support our concerns, we tested on an older system if the products are loading all their protection
modules before e.g. malware in the start-up folder is executed. All products failed this test, except
AVG and Sophos. AVG and Sophos were the only two products which detected and blocked the mal-
ware before its execution after system start-up (by loading itself at an early stage), in all others cases
first the malware was successfully executed and only later detected by the AV products, when it was
already too late.

3
We used 3GB data of various file categories (pictures, movies, music, various MS Office documents, PDF files,
applications/executables, Windows 7 system files, archives, etc.).
4
Converting MP3 files to WAV, MP3 to WMA, AVI to MPG and MPG to AVI, as well as IPOD format

‐ 4 ‐


Side notes and comments

The on-access/real-time scanner component of Anti-Virus software runs as a background process to
check all files that are accessed, in order to protect the system continuously against malware threats.
For example, on-access scanners scan files as soon as they are accessed, while (e.g.) behaviour-
blockers add a different layer of protection and monitor what the file does when it is already execut-
ed/running. The services and processes that run in the background to do these tasks also require and
use system resources.

Anti-Virus products need to be active deep in the system in order to protect it and (e.g.) to scan pro-
cesses and so on that are already active during the system start-up, to identify rootkits and other
malware. Those procedures add some extra time and thus a delay in system boot/start up.

If a product takes up too many system resources, users get annoyed and may either disable or unin-
stall some essential protective features (and considerably compromise the security of their system) or
may switch to security software that is less resource-hungry. Therefore, it is important not only that
Anti-Virus software provides high detection rates and good protection against malware, but also that
it does not degrade system performance or trouble users.

While this report looks at how much impact various Anti-Virus products have on system performance,
it is not always just the Anti-Virus software which is the main factor responsible for a slow system.
Other factors also play a role, and if users follow some simple rules, system performance can be im-
proved noticeably. The next sections address some of the other factors that may play a part.

A few common problems observed on some user PCs:

- Old hardware: If a PC already runs at a snail’s pace because it has ten-year-old hardware, us-
ing modern (Anti-Virus) software may make it unusable.
o If possible, buy a new PC that at least meets the minimum recommended requirements of
the software you want to use.
o Adding more RAM does not hurt. If you use Windows XP or Windows 7, you should use a
minimum of 2GB of RAM. If you still use Vista, switch to Windows 7.
o Make sure you have only ONE antivirus program with real-time protection. If your new PC
came with a trial Anti-Virus program, remove this before installing a different AV program.

- Clean up the content of your hard disk:
o If your hard disk is almost full, your system performance will suffer accordingly. Leave at
least 20% of your disk space free and move your movies and other infrequently accessed
files to another (external) disk.
o Uninstall unneeded software. Often, the slowdown that users notice after installing an
Anti-Virus product is due to other software on the PC running in the background (that is,
due to software conflicts or heavy file access by other programs, each access requiring an-
ti-virus scanning).
o Remove unneeded entries/shortcuts from the Autostart/start-up folder in the program
menu

‐ 5 ‐


o if your PC is already messed up by residual files and registry entries left over by hundreds
of applications you installed and uninstalled after trying them out over the past years, re-
install a clean operating system and install only software you really need (fewer software
installations, fewer potential vulnerabilities and conflicts, and so on) and use e.g. an im-
age/backup tool in order to ensure that you do not have to reinstall everything manually
in future.

- Defragment your hard disks regularly! A fragmented hard disk can have a very big impact on
system performance as well as considerably increasing the time needed to boot up the system.

- Keep all your software up-to-date: Using an Anti-Virus version from 2005 does not protect you
as well as the newer version would, even though you may still be able to update the signatures.
Visit http://update.microsoft.com regularly and keep your operating system up-to-date by installing
the recommended patches. Any software can have vulnerabilities and bugs, so keep all the soft-
ware installed on your PC up-to-date: this will not only protect you against many exploits and
vulnerabilities, but also give you any other application improvements that have been introduced.

- Fingerprinting/Optimization: most Anti-Virus products use various technologies to decrease
their impact on system performance. Fingerprinting is such a technology, where already scanned
files do not get rescanned again for a while (or more rarely) or are whitelisted. This increases the
speed considerably (esp. after some time the PC was used), but also adds some little potential
risk, as not all files are scanned anymore. Some Anti-Virus products do not scan all kind of files by
design/default (based on their file extensions), or use fingerprinting technologies, which may
skip already scanned files in order to increase the speed. It is up to the user to decide what to
prefer. We suggest performing regularly a full-system scan (to be sure that all files are at least
currently found as clean and to further optimize the fingerprinting).

- Be patient: a delay of a few additional seconds due to Anti-Virus is not necessarily a big deal.
However, if even with the suggestions above your PC still needs a considerably longer time to
boot up, for instance, after you have installed the Anti-Virus you should consider trying out an-
other Anti-Virus product (if you only notice a slow-down after using the Anti-Virus for a long
time, there are probably other factors behind the slowdown). Do not reduce your security by disa-
bling essential protection features, just in the hope of gaining a slightly faster PC.

‐ 6 ‐


Test results

These specific test results show the impact on system performance that Anti-Virus products have,
compared to the other tested Anti-Virus products. The reported data just give an indication and are
not necessarily applicable under all circumstances, as too many factors can play an additional part. As
we noticed that delivering percentages gets easily misinterpreted/misused, we grouped the results in
four categories, as the impact within those categories can be considered almost equal, also consider-
ing error measurements. The categories were defined by the testers, based on what would be
felt/noticed from user’s perspective (e.g. “slow” means that the user would notice and label the added
slowdown as too high, also compared to the impact of other security products). Under Windows 7 the
performance impact is smaller than e.g. on XP. Due that, we use new categories to reflect better the
differences under this operating system.

File copying

We copied a set of different file types which are widespread at home and office workstations form one
physical hard disk to another physical hard disk.
+0% to +10% very fast
+10% to +30% fast
+30% to +60% mediocre
over +60% slow

On subsequent runs
On first run (with fingerprinting,
if available)
Avast fast very fast
AVG fast very fast
AVIRA very fast very fast
Bitdefender mediocre fast
eScan mediocre very fast
ESET fast very fast
F-Secure fast fast
G DATA fast fast
K7 very fast very fast
Kaspersky very fast very fast
Kingsoft fast very fast
McAfee fast fast
Microsoft mediocre very fast
Norman mediocre fast
Panda fast very fast
PC Tools slow fast
Sophos fast very fast
Symantec fast very fast
Trend Micro slow fast
Trustport fast fast

‐ 7 ‐


Archiving and unarchiving

Archives are commonly used for file storage, and the impact of Anti-Virus software on the time taken
to create new archives or to unarchive files from existing archives may be of interest for most users.

We archived a set of different file types which are widespread at home and office workstations form
one physical hard disk to another physical hard disk and unzipped them after this again on a third
physical hard disk.

The results below already consider the fingerprinting/optimization technologies of the Anti-Virus
products, as most users usually make archives of files they have on their disk.

+10% to +20% fast
over +30% slow

Avast very fast
AVG very fast
AVIRA fast
Bitdefender very fast
eScan very fast
ESET very fast
F-Secure very fast
G DATA fast
K7 very fast
Kaspersky very fast
Kingsoft very fast
McAfee very fast
Microsoft very fast
Norman fast
Panda very fast
PC Tools mediocre
Sophos very fast
Symantec very fast
Trend Micro mediocre
Trustport very fast

‐ 8 ‐


Encoding/transcoding

Music files are often stored and converted on home systems, and converting such files takes system
resources. Due that, many home users may be interested to know if their Anti-Virus products imposes
a slowdown while converting multimedia files from one format to another.

We encoded and transcoded some multimedia files with FFmpeg, and for the IPOD conversion we used
HandBrakeCLI. The impact during FFmpeg and IPOD converting was almost the same.

+0 to +5% very fast
+5 to +10% fast
+10 to +25% mediocre
over +25% slow

Avast very fast
AVG very fast
AVIRA very fast
Bitdefender fast
eScan very fast
ESET very fast
F-Secure very fast
G DATA very fast
K7 very fast
Kaspersky fast
Kingsoft very fast
McAfee very fast
Microsoft very fast
Norman mediocre
Panda very fast
PC Tools slow
Sophos very fast
Symantec very fast
Trend Micro very fast
Trustport very fast

‐ 9 ‐


Installing/uninstalling applications

We installed several programs (like Visual C++, .NET Framework, etc.) with MSI installers, and then
uninstalled them and measured how long it took. We did not consider fingerprinting, because usually
an application is only installed once.

+10% to +25% fast
over +50% slow

Avast very fast
AVG fast
AVIRA very fast
Bitdefender fast
eScan very fast
ESET fast
F-Secure very fast
G DATA very fast
K7 fast
Kaspersky fast
Kingsoft very fast
McAfee fast
Microsoft very fast
Norman very fast
Panda fast
PC Tools mediocre
Sophos very fast
Symantec very fast
Trend Micro fast
Trustport very fast

‐ 10 ‐


Launching applications

Office document files and PDF files are very common. We opened some large document files in Mi-
crosoft Office (and closed it) and some large PDF files in Adobe Acrobat Reader (and closed it). Before
each opening, the workstation was rebooted. The time taken for the viewer or editor application to
open and a document to be displayed was measured.

Although we list the results for the first opening and the subsequent openings, we consider the sub-
sequent openings more important, as normally this operation is done several times by users, and op-
timization features of the Anti-Virus products take place, minimizing their impact on the systems.

+25% to +75% fast
over +150% slow

Open Word Open PDF
On first run On subsequent runs On first run On subsequent runs
(with fingerprinting, (with fingerprinting,
if available) if available)
Avast fast very fast fast very fast
AVG fast very fast very fast very fast
AVIRA very fast very fast very fast very fast
Bitdefender very fast very fast fast very fast
eScan fast fast fast fast
ESET very fast very fast very fast very fast
F-Secure very fast very fast very fast very fast
G DATA mediocre very fast mediocre very fast
K7 mediocre very fast fast very fast
Kaspersky slow mediocre mediocre mediocre
Kingsoft fast very fast fast very fast
McAfee fast very fast fast very fast
Microsoft fast very fast very fast very fast
Norman slow mediocre mediocre mediocre
Panda fast fast fast very fast
PC Tools mediocre fast fast fast
Sophos mediocre fast fast fast
Symantec fast fast fast very fast
Trend Micro fast fast fast fast
Trustport mediocre very fast fast very fast

Some optimization features may not take place in some products (or not reduce enough the impact),
as documents and PDF files are common infection targets and therefore are anyway scanned when
opened. Nevertheless, the fingerprinting would take place in on-demand scans.

‐ 11 ‐


Downloading files from the Internet

Files are commonly downloaded from the internet. To avoid external influences, we used an in-house
Apache web server (wget) connected with 100MB5 LAN and measured the download time. We tested
using various large files/archives.

+25% to +50% fast
over +100% slow

Avast very fast
AVG very fast
AVIRA fast
Bitdefender mediocre
eScan very fast
ESET fast
F-Secure very fast
G DATA fast
K7 very fast
Kaspersky very fast
Kingsoft very fast
McAfee very fast
Microsoft very fast
Norman very fast
Panda very fast
PC Tools very fast
Sophos very fast
Symantec very fast
Trend Micro very fast
Trustport very fast

5
We first tested using a 1GBit LAN, in which Bitdefender, ESET and G DATA got a (s)low score. We retested with
100MBit network after we have been notified that there is an issue which can be observed as lag especially in
1GBit networks, probably caused by the implementation of Windows Filtering Platform within Windows 7. Some
information about WFP can be read here: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/network/wfp.mspx Users
using a 1GBit network scenario may observe slower internet connections with some of the products which were
found to have issues, likely because of a problem inherent within the operating system.

‐ 12 ‐


PC Mark Tests

In order to provide an industry-recognized performance test, we used the PC Mark Vantage Profession-
al Edition6 1.0.2 testing suite of FutureMark. Users using PC Mark Vantage should take care to mini-
mize all external factors which could affect the testing suite and follow strictly at least the considera-
tions/suggestions documented inside the PC Mark manual, in order to get consistent and valid/useful
results. Furthermore, the tests should be repeated several times to verify them.

“The six Consumer Scenario suites are based on a collection of actual real-world end user applications,
and reflect the system performance a typical user would expect running those applications. Each test
suite contains a subset of the following tests as applicable: data encryption, decryption, compression and
decompression, GPU and CPU image manipulation, image import, video playback, editing and trans-
coding, audio playback and transcoding, GPU and CPU game tests, game data loading, web page render-
ing, mail operations, media player operations, contacts search, text editing and applicable HDD tests.
Each Consumer Scenario test suite generates a unique, fully comparable performance score for that series
of tests. A comprehensive, overall PCMark score is generated by running the PCMark Suite. And the HDD
Suite produces its own fully comparable performance score.”7

PC Mark score Points
without AV 38438 -
Sophos 3728 97
eScan 3719 97
K7 3701 96
AVIRA 3653 95
AVG 3623 94
Microsoft 3611 94
Kingsoft 3553 92
F-Secure 3546 92
ESET 3544 92
McAfee 3542 92
Norman 3525 92
Industry average 3516 91
Panda 3507 91
Avast 3501 91
Symantec 3496 91
Kaspersky 3442 90
Trustport 3432 89
Bitdefender 3394 88
G DATA 3355 87
PC Tools 3258 85
Trend Micro 3195 83

6
For more information, see http://www.futuremark.com/benchmarks/pcmarkvantage/introduction/
7
http://www.futuremark.com/pressroom/companypdfs/PCMark_Vantage_Reviewer%27s_Guide_v1.1_(PDF)
8
Baseline system: Intel Core 2 Duo E8300 machine with 2GB of RAM

‐ 13 ‐


We are not showing the scores for the subtests “Memories”, “TV and Movies”, “Gaming” and “HDD”,
because the difference was minimal to a system with no AV product.

PC Mark PC Mark PC Mark
Music Communications Productivity
score score score
without AV 4497 without AV 4323 without AV 3211
K7 4490 Sophos 4320 K7 3205
Microsoft 4434 K7 4244 Microsoft 3127
Norman 4412 Panda 4240 eScan 3031
eScan 4397 F-Secure 4220 AVIRA 3017
Sophos 4383 Symantec 4215 Sophos 3002
AVG 4361 Kingsoft 4200 Norman 2994
Kaspersky 4336 AVIRA 4191 Panda 2993
ESET 4304 McAfee 4189 G DATA 2982
AVIRA 4298 Avast 4156 ESET 2978
Symantec 4278 ESET 4152 F-Secure 2967
Industry 4273 AVG 4148 Trustport 2918
average Norman 4136 McAfee 2917
PC Tools 4270 eScan 4116 Kingsoft 2867
McAfee 4263 Industry 4073 Industry 2860
Panda 4259 average average
Bitdefender 4254 Trustport 3987 Symantec 2858
Trustport 4236 Kaspersky 3944 Kaspersky 2826
Kingsoft 4230 PC Tools 3872 Bitdefender 2822
G DATA 4128 Trend Micro 3845 AVG 2742
Trend Micro 4092 G DATA 3775 Avast 2492
F-Secure 4028 Microsoft 3766 PC Tools 2255
Avast 3997 Bitdefender 3743 Trend Micro 2210

4500 w ithout AV
Sophos

4000 eScan
K7
AVIRA
3500
AVG
Microsoft
3000
Kingsoft
F-Secure
2500 ESET
McAfee

2000 Norman
Panda
Avast
1500
Symantec
Kaspersky
1000
Trustport
Bitdefender
500 G DATA
PC Tools

0 Trend Micro
PCMark Memories TV and Movies Gaming Music Communications Productivity HDD

‐ 14 ‐


Summarized results

Users should weight the various subtests according to their needs. We applied a scoring system in
order to sum up the various results.

‐ 15 ‐


Certification levels reached in this test

We provide a 4-level ranking system: Tested, STANDARD, ADVANCED and ADVANCED+. All products
were quite good, and reached at least the STANDARD level, which means they have an acceptable
impact on system performance. ADVANCED means they have only a low impact on system performance
and ADVANCED+ denotes products with even lower impact (according to the test results).

The following certification levels are for the results reached in this performance test report. Please
note that the performance test only tells you how much impact an Anti-Virus may have on a system
compared to other Anti-Virus products; it does not tell you anything about the effectiveness of the
protection a product provides. To determine, for example, how the detection rates of the various Anti-
Virus products are, please refer to our other tests, available at www.av-comparatives.org

CERTIFICATION LEVELS PRODUCTS9

 K7
 Kingsoft
 Sophos
 Avast
 Microsoft
 eScan
 Symantec
 F-Secure
 AVG
 AVIRA
 Trustport
 Panda
 McAfee
 ESET

 G DATA
 Kaspersky

 Bitdefender
 Norman
 Trend Micro
 PC Tools

The above awards have been given based on our assessment of the overall impact results with default
settings.

9
We suggest considering products with same the award to be as good as the other products with same award.

‐ 16 ‐


Copyright and Disclaimer

This publication is Copyright © 2010 by AV-Comparatives e.V. ®. Any use of the results, etc. in whole
or in part, is ONLY permitted if the explicit written agreement of the management board of AV-
Comparatives e.V. is given prior to any publication. AV-Comparatives e.V. and its testers cannot be
held liable for any damage or loss, which might occur as a result of, or in connection with, the use of
the information provided in this paper. We take every possible care to ensure the correctness of the
basic data, but no representative of AV-Comparatives e.V. can he held liable for the accuracy of the
test results. We do not give any guarantee of the correctness, completeness, or suitability for a spe-
cific purpose of any of the information/content provided at any given time. No one else involved in
creating, producing or delivering test results shall be liable for any indirect, special or consequential
damage, or loss of profits, arising out of, or related to, the use or inability to use, the services pro-
vided by the website, test documents or any related data. AV-Comparatives e.V. is a Non-Profit Organ-
ization.

AV-Comparatives e.V. (December 2010)

‐ 17 ‐

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