Whether an individual’s antivirus program is free or premium, the real question always lies on the performance of the software. It is imperative that any antivirus, no matter the cost, should be user friendly and above all use the absolute minimum amount of CPU memory as possible.
With the amount of viruses roaming around in the current computing environment, the most required feature of an antivirus is the real time protection feature. This feature guards a computer on a real time basis from any potential Trojans, worms, and other malware. With this type of protection, if the CPU usage would be high for the antivirus, then all other programs could possibly be affected with high processing time. This would make other programs run slowly, and the response time of the operating system itself could also decrease.
That being said, it is helpful to look at many antiviruses in the market currently to see which would have the lowest CPU usage. If an antivirus program has too great of a CPU usage it can slow down a computer, possibly even paralyzing a computer system to the point that it grinds to a halt.
Low CPU usage and other important features can determine which program would be the best fit for your computer system and your needs. The following are just some popular antivirus products that should be looked at in terms of memory usage when figuring out what is right for you. They were all tested on the same system in order to ensure that the results were consistent.
Norton Antivirus 2012
The latest in the Norton Antivirus series would be the highest CPU user of all the antiviruses currently in the market. As an average, the current edition of Norton Antivirus takes around 9000K of standalone memory usage. This means that if only real time protection is enabled, and nothing else is running on the computer other than the antivirus real time protection, then the CPU would experience a 9000K usage on a constant basis. Its CPU scanning usage comes to about 51,332K. While Norton is a powerful, effective antivirus solution, it eats up more memory than any other top product in the market today.
BitDefender 2012
If you are running any version of the Windows operating system, you may want to consider BitDefender for real time protection and effective virus scanning of your PC. BitDefender offers comprehensive protection, and it is compatible with the updates of many Windows-based service packs, and it is known for not causing conflict with the operating system. Even though the memory usage stands relatively high at 8500K on standby and 45010K at scanning, this software is extremely reliable. It rarely crashes and is always highly recommended for PC users.
AVG Antivirus 2012
There are many critics that feel AVG antivirus is the best possible solution for a home user because it is one of the most user friendly antivirus products that are available in the market today. It may not be the lightest in term of CPU memory usage, but the actual amount of memory usage is quite less than many other premium antiviruses with capabilities on par with many paid antiviruses as well. To be technically precise, the AVG 2012 takes about 6000K on idle standby and around 35000K when running a full-fledged scan on the entire hard drive. One of the most amazing features of the AVG antivirus is the fact that this software has probably the most easy to use user interface of them all. Plus it has a unique feature known as Anti-spyware that enables real time protection in your email, Twitter, and Facebook account as well, a necessity for the home user.
Windows Security Essentials
Windows users around the globe enjoy Microsoft’s security solution, Microsoft Windows Security Essentials. It is one of the lightest anti-viruses in terms of CPU usage that is on the market today. It takes around 2600 K when in a real time monitoring, idle state. It uses 12500K when running a comprehensive CPU hard disk scan. Probably the best thing about this antivirus solution is that it is completely free from the Microsoft website. It is also very efficient for use with any version of the Windows operating system from XP to Vista to Windows 7.
About Guest Author: -
Sally Thames has written this article. She’s a freelance writer and also writes for http://www.antivirussoftwarealert.us . If you have questions or suggestions for her please contact her by twitter @SallyThames.
Thanks for this article, Sally. I have only 500MB RAM to play around with so memory usage is critical to me. The latest iteration of Avira is hogging too much of it. Looks like AVG is the go.