Pretty informative test.
They describe the tests in details - that makes it very trustworthy. As opposed to that German “av-test” company who just output a bunch of so-called “results” :
They do some nice and thorough tests, including boot time test using Windows SDK (that is a cool approach, i bet noone used it before), installed size test, etc.
At the same time they did have some slips:
it seems that they did not install the latest windows updates, (which is an unusual situation nowadays)
they average file scans based on 4 runs (because they claim the first one is slower most of the times). That is incorrect approach, as normally AV scans the file once, and not 4 times in a row. What they should have done is to measure only the first scan time.
the average is not correctly calculated in some graphs: there is a clear outsider on many tests that is like 1000% slower that the rest. That outsider should have been excluded from the “average”. Also the scale on some graphs is messed up by that outsider, which makes it difficult to compare.
they count amount of reg keys created. The number of reg keys does not affect performance in any way.
there were no “virus detection” tests… so these tests are only about performance.
I think there were stiil a couple of stable versions after that one and also the one where on now 5.1.889, so for test’s that were released on the 16th of feb 2011 it is quite an old version.
It would seem Passmark does not want to run all the tests over for each product and is only testing previously untested products. They have the best testing methods but not testings all products using the latest versions is a major flaw IMO. I would also like to see the average score calculation method changed. I say drop the best and worst performers from the average. The way it is now the average is way to high because in many cases at least one product performs so bad it screws up the average score.
I ran almost very build of 5.0.xxx. Beta through 5.1.889 and all have been completely stable on my three PC’s. At this point I’m using Avast IS on Windows 7 64. I have many friends and relatives that are running Avast 5 free or paid under XP, Vista and windows 7. To this day I have had zero phone calls reporting problems. So yes I’d say Avast is stable. I’m running Avast IS 6 beta on my main box and its 100% stable. It still needs some tweaking but that is to be expected. The reason Passmark tested such and old version is the test is old. Look at the date it was tested. Oh and sure there are lots of people posting about problems. That is what this forum is all about. Its a bleeping support forum. :
5.1.889 has been extreemly stable for me and not one problem, there was actually only a handful of problems with some people’s system’s and most of them are because there not deleting programs correctly or a conflict with some sort of software or some program on there system has messed up with the settings or just plainly they dont know how to properly clean there system’s, i dont know how many people in the last month alone have been instructed to get rid of ASC 360 off there system or there running teatimer or firewall are not set right, so yes i do believe that the .889 version was stable.