Avast 5-- how to reduce CPU burden

Avast takes its share of CPU power, although its overhead is not excessive for what it does. My question is how to trim down Avast overhead to minimize the impact of Avast on my bandwidth.

For example, I do not use IM or P2P (peer networks like Bit Torrent, etc.), so I can safely disable these shields. But are there other settings I can modify to minimize the impact of Avast on my system performance?

In a recent test, I found my five Avast shields reduced my internet bandwidth by more than 2 mbps, which is enough to impact my video (my bandwidth theoretical max is 12 mbps).

Obviously, I value safety over entertainment value, so if there are no safe reductions in shield protection to be made, I prefer to learn to live with it.

Which avast do you use?
You can try the latest build: http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=59223.30
asyn

P2P or IM shields don’t monitor the network traffic, but rather the files being saved to disk.
Therefore, disabling them has absolutely no effect on the “bandwidth”.