Anti-Virus that doesn't kill performance.

[G3rain1]

I need an anti virus program that alows me to play 3d games in peace.

Corporate version of Symantic causes my games to "hitch" (stick on a single frame for about a quarter of a second) every 3 to 5 seconds or so.

AVG causes horrific stuttering for periods of 10 to 15 seconds repeating themselves every 5 minuets or so.

No AV = games running smooth.

What else is out there that is good but lets me play games.



I don't get why this is even an issue though... I have a 3.0Ghz quad core processor. It should be impossible for these programs to steal 100% of the cycles from all four cores. Seriously, what are they doing that requires that much power?

 

[bjornlo]

I am pretty sure the problem is not in your CPU but your motherboard.
The problem, and I am only guessing, is the south bridge and how IO intensive AV programs have to be.
4 cores @ 3ghs, 8gb of ram, 64bit OS, fast video card here.... and still the PC just dies sometimes when a scan is taking place. I found that some are worse than others. The worst I tried was the corp. version of Symantec. The new one is (SEPP) is slightly better, but still sucks here. AVG is such a poor AV program it is not worth considering.
The two best AV programs are Kaspersky and Nod32. Neither are free, but both have free downloadable demos. They are fully working for a month.
I tried Nod32, and liked it. I had previously used Kaspersky and had been pleased with it too. I was just looking for something which impacted PC performance less than kaspersky. To be honest I can not recall how much better or worse Nod32 was. I do recall it seemed fairly fast and stable... but around 9 months ago I decided to go to a 64bit OS because it let me do most of the things I like to do faster (compile programs, render 3d images, and so on). Game play was unchanged.
But there was no 64bit friendly version of Nod32 at the time, so I went back to kazpersky.

If you are not playing online, just pull out the network plug and disable your AV program.
If you are playing online, try one of the better AV programs. With Kazpersky and my OC'd 8800 GTS (g92 type) I can play Crysis at fairly high settings with only the occasional pause for a split second and it is not too often.

other things try... associate your AV program with only 1 core.
If a scan is running while you are gaming, reschedule the scan for when you are working or sleeping.
Try restarting just before you play. I find a restart sorts out the goofyness the various programs leave behind. Windows usually gets blamed for these things, but Windows is not at fault when it is Bryce 6.1 that has a memory leak... or if Poser locks up some files because my runtime is too large for it, etc...

 

[G3rain1]

I am pretty sure the problem is not in your CPU but your motherboard.
The problem, and I am only guessing, is the south bridge and how IO intensive AV programs have to be.

2GBs of 800 Mhz ram in dual channel mode isn't enough bandwidth?

4 cores @ 3ghs, 8gb of ram, 64bit OS, fast video card here.... and still the PC just dies sometimes when a scan is taking place.

But I'm not even running a scan, I think its just the "auto protect" feature that runs in memory all the time.

The two best AV programs are Kaspersky and Nod32. Neither are free, but both have free downloadable demos. They are fully working for a month.
I tried Nod32, and liked it. I had previously used Kaspersky and had been pleased with it too. I was just looking for something which impacted PC performance less than kaspersky. To be honest I can not recall how much better or worse Nod32 was. I do recall it seemed fairly fast and stable... but around 9 months ago I decided to go to a 64bit OS because it let me do most of the things I like to do faster (compile programs, render 3d images, and so on). Game play was unchanged.
But there was no 64bit friendly version of Nod32 at the time, so I went back to kazpersky.

What about free ones? Avast? AntiVir? I don't want to pay for something and then find out it doesn't do what I want.

With Kazpersky and my OC'd 8800 GTS (g92 type) I can play Crysis at fairly high settings with only the occasional pause for a split second and it is not too often.

This is exactly what I get with Symantec, and I'm I geting that in a game that's 10 years old (Half life 1 engine mods)

other things try... associate your AV program with only 1 core.
If a scan is running while you are gaming, reschedule the scan for when you are working or sleeping.
Try restarting just before you play. I find a restart sorts out the goofyness the various programs leave behind. Windows usually gets blamed for these things, but Windows is not at fault when it is Bryce 6.1 that has a memory leak... or if Poser locks up some files because my runtime is too large for it, etc...

I'll try some of that but Id rather dump the junk I have and get a program the works with out being a resource hog. Though I'm pretty obsessive about what I allow to run in my ram. I run a clean ship. Usual I have less than 25 processes going.

 

[gomerpile]

use hostman to setup a host file Y'll be satifsied with it. Now if you need to check download files use mcfee online virus scan. You will be happy with this.

http/www.abelhadigital.com/

 

[luminaris]

I have a dual core running at 1.83Mhz (stock) and a 8800GTS card. I use ESET Nod32 on windows vista and my machine runs nice and fluid. I've tried others and so far, the Nod32 software has worked the best for me.