AV-Comparatives is known for the thorough tests it does on security software, and its October 2008 report contains performance testing on security software. 16 products from August (this report builds on a previous one) were tested. Security applications may have been updated since then, but it's not likely that there have been any significant changes in terms of performance (major versions are typically released before August). The tests were performed 20 times on Intel Core 2 Duo 8400 machines with 2GB of RAM, running Windows XP SP3, and then averaged.
Four tests were conducted (file copying, archiving and unarchiving, encoding/transcoding, and boot time). Results (measured as percentage increase) for each were calculated by comparing the time for the task to how long the task would take without the software. AV-Comparatives then took the mean of all four tests and applied its usual three-level ranking system (F-Secure and Trustport use several engines and on highest settings both received over 300 percent).
So, without further ado, in order of best to worst:
- Advanced+: ESET, Symantec, VBA32, Avast, McAfee, Microsoft, BitDefender, GDATA, AVIRA
- Advanced: Norman, Kaspersky, AVG, eScan, Sophos
- Standard: TrustPort, F-Secure
Data source: AV-Comparatives
The results are on par with what I have seen recently in the security software area: in pay-for solutions, Kaspersky is more resource-hungry than ESET, and for free solutions, AVIRA and Avast both beat out AVG. Symantec does surprisingly well given its history as a resource-hog, which shows the company appears to have kept its promise to stop releasing bloatware. Microsoft is of course out of the game in pay solutions, but we'll keep an eye on how the company's free solution will fare.
Performance is important to many people who shop for security software, so I'm happy to see such recent data made available to give buyers more to work with when they make their decisions.
- AV-Comparatives: Performance Test October 2008