Avast 2015, latest version, on Windows 8.1 x64 Media Center. Well-tuned, powerful workstation.
To do things like a Visual Studio 2013 build of a medium sized C++ project, I find the time now increases by more than 1/3 to have Avast 2015 on task. See the attached screen grabs.
Example build times (shown in seconds) with shields enabled and disabled shown in the attached screen grabs. You may think an extra 11 or 12 seconds isn’t much, but when you do it many, many times…
Avast can certainly avoid most re-checking of input files and build tools during something like a software build, and certainly there are some new outputs from a software build that should be considered scannable. But adding 1/3 more time on a powerful system? That’s getting excessive.
And yes, I know about excluding parts of my system from the File System Shield. I may consider doing so.
I don’t believe Avast used to add anywhere near this much overhead. I recall doing head to head testing in early 2014 with exactly this project pitting Avast against Windows Defender, and Avast added maybe 2 seconds, not 12!
I don’t know what your File Shield settings are regards the use of caches - not sure if mine are the defaults, given I regularly export my settings and import them on program updates.
Yes, all the cache settings are on like yours, David - all on - but it sure seems they don’t make the difference they ought to.
What I ended up doing was excluding read and write operations from file shield scanning for my development folder tree; that knocked 10 seconds back out of the time. I can live with 33 seconds. Plus I still have a daily full scan that runs every day at 6am and I left execute protection on everywhere.
Eddy: It’s a dual Xeon system with an array of SSDs. But even with ridiculous power on tap Avast has gotten a fair bit slower over the past year. Maybe it’s just the price of scanning for so many millions of new viruses. :-\ One day perhaps I’ll meet a virus writer (or software pirate) in person. That will be a fun day indeed. For me.
Hey, someone ripped that pirate’s eyes out. Those razor sharp claws…
FYI, regarding performance, all day yesterday with reads/writes excluded in my development area and my system felt like it did in days of yore. I definitely got more done because of it. And amazingly, I didn’t catch any viruses from my own software under development! Arrrrrrr!
Eddy, since you mentioned browsing… I’m not really having any noticeable problems with browsing speed (I’m knocking on wood in case you can’t hear it).
Pretty much everything comes up right away. I suppose if that were 1/3 faster I might feel it, but I guess there’s a threshold under which you don’t notice the overhead. For example, Internet Explorer opens a new browser window (e.g., after double-clicking the e icon) in a tiny fraction of a second (closest I could measure with my old school stopwatch is 0.2 second). When I choose the Favorite I’ve stored for this site, it shows the forum overview page in 0.8 second. Do you have some specific operations (e.g., navigating to particular sites, etc.) that you feel are particularly slow with Avast on duty?
