The update is now officially released as avast 4.7.936. Thanks to everyone who helped testing this release – let’s hope it will be a successful one.
Update: the build number is now 4.7.932. The 932 build brings a couple of fixes (especially on Vista) as well as a new language module - Catalan.
Hi again,
as promised, here’s the new (pre-release) version of the upcoming update of avast! Home/Professional. The version is currently labeled as 4.7.925 (edit: now 4.7.932).
How to install it (for starters - most people already know this trick anyway ): simply download and run the following program: link removed. That’s about all it takes (provided you have the latest version of avast Home/Pro already installed, of course).
There is a number of fixes in this release. Here’s the list of most important changes:
significantly improved scanning speed! - especially on the latest CPUs (Intel Core 2), the performance gain can be as much as 40%! This is especially true when scanning without archive unpacking
reduced memory consumption - avast should now run lighther even on older machines (e.g. 64MB RAM machines)
lower CPU usage during system boot - this should make your system start somewhat faster
a brand new Standard Shield driver for Vista (aswMonFlt.sys) - now supporting new Vista features (e.g. NTFS transactions) as well as providing improved scanning performance. If you’re running Vista, please TEST the on-access scanner as much as possible. Hopefully, not BSODs will happen - we’re a bit nervous about this. Thx.
fixed a couple of bugs in Win32 unpackers, plus added support for a bunch of new ones (however, the most important ones on on the list (Armadillo & Obsidium) didn’t make it to the release, they’ll probably be included in the next update)
improved detection of full-screen apps (if you have the Don’t Display Popups When Full Screen Apps Are Running option enabled) - now 100% Vista Aero compatible + better detection of e.g. full screen video players
Any comments on this release are very welcome and appreciated!
A quick test reveals only small speed improvement in my case, but this is only against 6.1 GB of data on a Standard scan without archived. This is a scan that I do weekly and I have monitored times, previous scans were around 9:10 nine minutes ten seconds occasionally a little over.
I ran the first scan and went off, came back to a surprise avast had found a virus (in firefox browser cache, extension less file), a very rare event for me (I believe I know where it came from, testing a suspect site, but no alerts then), so that messed the timings somewhat. After confirming the detection was good at VirusTotal (only 7 other AVs detected it) I started the second scan.
This second scan took 8:50 eight minutes fifty seconds, so a small improvement (a little over 4%), which for those with much more data they should see an even better time saving. Whilst my CPU isn’t a dual core it is probably now classed as below average (see signature), but whilst scanning the CPU load never got over 75% and frequently well below that, so the CPU would seem to be well up to the task.
I am running on a Dell XPS 400 (Pentium Dual core) with 2Gb memory under Win XP SP2. Disks are 2 SATA internal and 3 USB external.
Before installing the new beta:
I ran a standard scan of my system (all local disks - archive scan disabled). Run time 10:37
I ran my normal weekly ashquick.exe scan of all drives. Run time 40:19
I then installed the new beta and restarted the system:
I ran a standard scan of my system (all local disks - archive scan disabled). Run time 9:51 (7% improvement)
I noted that during this scan one of the processors was almost completely idle for the entire duration of the scan.
I ran my normal weekly ashquick.exe scan of all drives. Run time 32:35 (19% improvement). This scan exercises both processors and even managed to run both at 100% simultaneously for brief peaks).
So - does the improvement mentioned only come with Intel Core 2 and not with Dual Core?
SSE and smilar instructins only help for lets say video encoding/decoding.
Vlk just mentioned Coe 2 Duo as it’s a very new dual core CPU. I’m sure gains will be seen on AMD Athlon X2 series as well…
Guys, you misinterpreted my statement. I never said scanning is now parallelized (it is not). I just said scanning speed is improved, especially on Core 2 architecture CPUs.
What actually took place is that one of the key scanning algorithms in avast (namely, a pattern matching algorithm)was completely replaced by a new one. The new code, originally written in C++ was then hand-rewritten to a highly optimized assembler by one of our ASM gurus. And while doing so, “Core 2” was chosen as the reference architecture (when hand-optimizing code, you usually have to choose a fixed CPU family/stepping (sometimes even the revision) because timings and other characteristics can be very different across different families). Core 2 was chosen for two reasons: first, it’s a CPU of the future (more and more people will be getting it in the upcoming year), and second, we’re REALLY excited about this CPU. It simply rocks, and we believe it’s the biggest step Intel made since the transition to Pentium (AMD is clearly loosing the battle here). On the other hand, P4/Netburst is a nightmare (as in “really bad for code optimization”) and this includes P4-D that alanrf probably has (the original Intel dual core CPU).
By the way, talking about parallelization of the scanning algorithm. This is definitely on our roadmap, but I’d just like to say that by default, it will definitely NOT be preset to use all N cores. Instead, we will probably make it use N-1 cores by default (that is, if your CPU is dual-core it would run on a single core (as it does now) anyway…). The reason is simple - we don’t want to totally choke the computer while performing the scan! The whole beaty of multi-core processing is that more things can be done in parallel (i.e. scanning for viruses AND something else). Well, at least theoretically - shared resources (such as the hard drive in our case) somewhat ruin this idea…
So, this feature will really start making sense when quad-core CPUs become more prevalent - and the release of avast 5 sounds like a timeframe reasonably aligned with this.
Vlk, you mentioned Armadillo. Does this mean you have a full 1:1 Armadillo unpacker in the works?
EDIT:
WTF!? I downloaded aswbeta.exe, executed it as usual, there is that ding sound and no update dialog at all. And process is not even running. What gives!?
Vlk, you mentioned Armadillo. Does this mean you have a full 1:1 Armadillo unpacker in the works?
Yep, and I think it’s almost ready now… (I think)
WTF!? I downloaded aswbeta.exe, executed it as usual, there is that ding sound and no update dialog at all. And process is not even running. What gives!?
Oh, goodie, i just restored disk image hehe. Thanks to Gigabytes Xpress Recovery it took only 9 minutes ;D Worked fine now, probably because you fixed it in between lol
In regards to my earlier post ( http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=25504.0 ) … I have tried to use this new beta version on Windows Vista to see if it cleared up the Video Playback error for Transcode360 (Transcode 360)…
If you recall, the error was:
Video Error
Files needed to display video are not installed or not working correctly. Please restart Windows Media Center or restart the computer.
My setup is:
Windows: Vista RTM - Ultimate
UAC: On
avast!: v4.7.925 Beta
Transcode360: v1.6.1 Beta (for Windows Vista)
Results:
Still fails. Even using the new version of avast!, I still get that error. I have not tried just disabling the realtime virus protection, but will do that next.
The Transcode 360 developer says that this problem is YOURS, since the program works fine when using Windows OneCare on Vista. I tend to agree too, because if I uninstall avast! and restart my pc, the program works flawlessly. Nevertheless, I’m keeping pressure on him to keep trying to find a solution.
At the same time, I need your help to find the real root cause of this issue.
I never said scanning is now parallelized (it is not). I just said scanning speed is improved, especially on Core 2 architecture CPUs.