Which AV is most ressource friendly ?

Hi

This question may have been asked before, so forgive me, but out of Avast and Microsoft Security Essentials which one out of those is the most lightweight on system resources ?

I recently reinstalled Windows and before I've been using ESET Smart Security, it works well and seems pretty fast, but my subscription is about to expire in a little over a month and I would like to look at alternatives before forking another 60 bucks or so.


Your thoughts ?

I don't even notice MSE here. It's really light

hi !

JordanJP: PLEASE do a search before you create a new thread !

here you have a couple of threads to take a look at:

AV With the Smallest Footprint

what is the most light antivirus for mini laptop

another thread related to the subject, might be of interest:
a-squared uses 620kB memory for realtime protection !

short summary:
Avast uses a lot less then MSE, but a-squared uses less then 1MB when idle in the background & not scanning.

well I decided that I'll be sticking with my ESET until it expires then I may continue with a new subscription. I mean, I do like it and it does offer excellent protection, plus it's light on my system.

MSE is good and light, just takes a tad bit too much memory, but better in my opinion than avast anyways. I understand that benchmarks from another thread disproves this but my experience with MSE has been much less buggy, intrusive, complicated, and laggy.
Don't forget that mse is microsoft's OWN tool. They wouldn't mess it up!

I've seen MSE use up to ~50 MBs (on a couple of machines).

Avast and Avira AntiVir Personal seem to the be 'lightest' AVs around ATM.

hi !

no, a-squared uses less memory, if you mean realtime-protection when idle in the background & not active scanning:
a-squared uses 620kB memory for realtime protection !

but i suggest we continue the discussion in one of the threads i listed in my first post above.

hackerman you were very enthusiastic about a-squared lol
but if a-squared has poor anti-malware abilities, it is worthless. Performance wise, it seems good

sparkie said:

hackerman you were very enthusiastic about a-squared lol
but if a-squared has poor anti-malware abilities, it is worthless. Performance wise, it seems good

It has good Anti-Malware abilities...
A-squared was developed as Anti-Malware program like Malwarebytes (and according to some test has better detection then Malwarebytes)
Paid version of A-sqauared Ani Malware has real-time protection and both Anti-malware and Anti-virus.
It uses Ikarus AV engine which is belived to be powerful.

One bad thing about A-sqaured is it's know for False Positives. (But I haven't seen it myself yet)

btw, Hackerman I am still stuck on 18 MBs :\