Avast WEBforum
Consumer Products => Avast Free Antivirus / Premium Security (legacy Pro Antivirus, Internet Security, Premier) => Topic started by: Drazick on May 14, 2008, 01:37:19 PM
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Hello.
What can I do in order to make Avast use as low as possible resources?
Is there any chance for a "Light Version"?
The latest versions became very resource hungry.
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Hmmm... I see no movement on resources consumption from 4.7 to 4.8... on contrary.
Do you use P2P or IM applications? You can disable that providers if you don't have any.
Also, which email application do you use?
Which is your Standard Shield sensitivity level? High or Normal?
Which other resident programs are you running?
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I use only 1 provider (Didn't install any other but the On-Access).
I'm on Vista.
I have the impression Avast got bigger and bigger.
It used to be small with a small memory footprint.
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I use only 1 provider (Didn't install any other but the On-Access).
I'm on Vista.
I won't uninstall NetShield and WebShield, neither the email providers... don't you use any email program?
I have the impression Avast got bigger and bigger.
It used to be small with a small memory footprint.
I don't think so... Vista is what is taking much more resources than XP...
Which is your Standard Shield sensitivity level?
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Normal.
Everything in its default setting.
No email (Using Web Based Only).
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You use the terms, seemed and got the impression, you have to be more specific about what it uses on your system before and after as there is nothing to compare against.
Yes avast uses some more resources in this 4.8 version than it did in the 4.7 version, but it is still light in comparison to many other AVs and in the greater scheme of things resources (I assume you mean RAM) as a percentage of your system RAM is minuscule.
Though you don't give us any information on your system and the possible impact on your resources, CPU, RAM, other applications and Security applications running, etc. Hell I look at Task Manager not the best to gage actual memory use and firefox uses more memory than all of avast combined so does Windows Explorer, so does my Firewall.
So we need to get things in perspective, resources are there to be used and if necessary managed. But given the improvements in avast 4.8 and a slight increase in resources I see no appreciable difference in my system responsiveness and I have no speed machine.
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It's not a night and day difference.
Yet I want to use it in a configuration which consumes the least resources possible.
Maybe Avast is lighter than some others, yet it's not as light as I would like it to be.
To this matter, NOD is much lighter.
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Not lighter on your wallet though ;D
I have never used Nod so can't comment on the resource use. There are tricks that can be used to make things look like they are light on resources. AVG up to v8.0 used to run some of its processes inside the windows kernel and they don't show up as AVG on any check on Task Manager. So I also don't know at what levels Nod operates, so again can do no direct comparison.
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It's not a night and day difference.
Yes, I agree. The new 4.8.1195 (with default settings) grabbed 20 Mb of RAM more than the previous build.
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it may seems to eat more because of the background rootkit scan after system loads up ...
what about after some time when it's done ?
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Maybe Avast is lighter than some others, yet it's not as light as I would like it to be.
We always wish this: best protection with no resources usage ::)
To this matter, NOD is much lighter.
A little difference: it's not free ;)
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yeah my pf usage has gone up about 20mb. :-\
something else i noticed after installing (4.8.1195) is that the P2P Shield has changed to custom all by itself... (shouldn't it be set to normal?).
and these:
uTorrent
Azureus Vuze
Qtraz
are all unticked... is this normal?
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I give you my (limited) experience:
Since I am low on hardware, I use AVAST with the "standard shield" and "internet mail" providers only.
I never understood well the effectiveness of the "overlapping" protection given by the whole suite of "providers".
Right now, after a whole day of computer work, I get about 15M of "standard" memory usage AND about the same of "virtual" memory usage. Somebody told me the "standard" memory can be re-used by other applications while the "virtual" memory is reserved by the application and not released. So for example if a softare uses 8M of standard memory and 60M of virtual memory (this was my AVIRA mem usage) it means 60M is the actual quantity not available for other applications. Then, if this is correct, it is much better have a low virtual memory.
Plus AVAST is quite complete (mail, rootkits, spyware + usual threats).
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something else i noticed after installing (4.8.1195) is that the P2P Shield has changed to custom all by itself... (shouldn't it be set to normal?).
<snip and formatted, space consideration>
and these:
uTorrent - Azureus Vuze - Qtraz - are all unticked... is this normal?
The last two are newly supported applications, but by default are unchecked. The uTorrent, it was decided because of the way it worked creating hundreds (or more) small files which effectively increased the avast scanning and put a strain on the users system (higher CPU activity). That it why it was unchecked bu default, what is strange is these although default settings appear to change the sensitivity to Custom.
The fact it is at custom I don't believe adds to the sensitivity, etc as there is no difference like there is if you changed the Standard Shield or Web Shield sensitivity which changes what is actually scanned.
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I never understood well the effectiveness of the "overlapping" protection given by the whole suite of "providers".
They're not overlapping at the default settings. Use Standard Shield at Normal sensitivity and keep the other providers to protect specific issues in the computer. avast is not a suite.
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Ok thanks for clearing that up for me, David.
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You're welcome.
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They're not overlapping at the default settings. Use Standard Shield at Normal sensitivity and keep the other providers to protect specific issues in the computer. avast is not a suite.
This is exactly what I don't get well. I tried to look better at each provider but, since the "standard shield" covers already the "on-access" mode, whatever the other providers do, the "standard shield" stops the threats when they (the files) are accessed, so it looks like all the providers are "overlapping" the "standard shield". Ok I can suppose the "web shield" intercept the threat before the "standard shield", as soon as the file is loaded in memory versus when the system tries to write the file on the disk. But unless the range of detected threats is different depending on the provider, in my poor understanding the providers are redundant. Like I said, I need to save resources and that is the reason why I stripped AVAST to the bare minimum.
About the "suite", maybe it is the wrong description for a group of specialized services but I don't know how to describe it better.
Regards.
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The other providers (Web Shield, Internet Mail, P2P, Instant Messaging, Network Shield) for the most parts are scanning outside content to stop it from getting on your system in the first place. So if they catch it the standard shield doesn't get a look in, if it gets past those it might even get past the standard shield as the detections are based on the same signatures.
So the other providers are based on prevention where the standard shield is effectively dealing with those on the system. Prevention is much easier than cure, once a file gets on your system it may well be much harder to remove.
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So if they catch it the standard shield doesn't get a look in, if it gets past those it might even get past the standard shield as the detections are based on the same signatures.
But this works in the opposite direction as well, if the detection range is the same, the Standard Shield would detect the same threats as the specialized providers. If the Standard Shield stops threats (the same threats the other providers can detect) to be written, read, executed and whatever meaningful else, It looks like the Standard Shield is pretty much all I need to stay safe. If it fails, the other providers would fail as well...
But I don't have much choices, If I run all the providers I get too many resources used plus the performance of several functions are degraded, like browsing the web. Ok it isn't that much but still it is visible on an old system. My reasoning is the level of higher protection I get from the providers (it seems zero for the above reasons) versus the resources consumed (that are way above zero).
I don't want to criticize AVAST design, probably it is the coolest thing ever when you don't have to worry about few megabytes of RAM or CPU cycles.
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I guess you missed the bit about once on your system they can be difficult to remove, in use, protected, hidden by rootkit, etc. you system your choice.
If you haven't got the RAM you could always upgrade it, RAM is reasonably inexpensive at the moment assuming you can find some that matches your old hardware. You don't mention how much RAM you have or what CPU on your system.
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My system is a PIII 500 with 256M of RAM, Win2K SP4.
It works not bad with AVAST full install and all the providers but I (being dumb probably) don't get how the providers increase the system protection since they detect the same things as the Standard Shield. All the possible threats must be written, accessed or executed on my system before they become dangerous. It doesn't look like the providers can detect something that Standard Shield misses.
So at the end I think it is not worth it loading all the providers in exchange of the gain in protection.
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Lets assume that you have an undetected trijan on your system it is free to download more malware, we see examples of this in the forums where the web shield block content before it is downloaded. That same malware could also try to protect what it downloads when it arrives on your system.
Currently in the forums there is one Topic where avast reports a warning/error that it can't scan the file because access is denied http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=35484.0 (http://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=35484.0) (are you getting the picture), so avast can't scan it, certainly not when it is established on the system, so preventing it getting on to the system is far better than dealing with it when it is on your system.