The AV-Comparatives website published an article about the different impacts on the Windows 8.1 based system and 20 antivirus programs, to see which one makes the system slower, and which one is the lightest.

The antivirus selection made by AV-Comparatives could have been better, but still it gives you an idea of the general trend on the market. Which one will be the best antivirus for a Windows 8.1 based system?

The test method is pretty simple, and it consists of 3 different phases. First of all, they run their tests on a clean system, without any antivirus, to get a reference score. After that, they test the system with the antivurs on, replicating many daily tasks (compress, decompress, install a program, using it, uninstall, to copy file, download, encode a video or audio file..) which will give a score of 90 points. Then, they use PC Mark 6 that will give another score on 100 points. When both tests are done, they add those scores and subtract the result on 190 in order to get the Impact score.

As you can see from the table below, Bitdefender, Kaspersky, Avira and ESET scored pretty well, AVAST is right behind with Sophos, F-Secure and Panda. McAfee is at the bottom since its impact on the system is pretty heavy. Unfortunately, there are a few important name missing, like Microsoft Security Essential (that could have been implemented in the “no antivirus” test) or Norton, which is famous to be really heavy to handle. Still, you must remember that this test only tells us what is the impact on a system, performance-wise, but it does not tell us anything about the actual defensive skills of the program. You can check out more information at the following link.




Source: Test AV-Comparatives
via Le Comptoir du Hardware.