Avast's Commit Charge

[drjster]

(XPH, 512 MB RAM, Athlon XP 2000+ CPU)

I've been testing several AV packages and one thing that caught my eye was the commit charge total (from XP's task manager) on my machine. For those who don't know, the commit charge total refers to the total amount of physical and virtual memory the computer is using at that moment.

After a reboot, the following commit charge totals were noted:
(with Avast 4.6.691 as the only AV)     155 M
(with AVG as the only AV)                   132 M
(with eTrust EZ AV as the only AV)      124 M
(with Nod32 as the only AV)                120 M

Any ideas as to why the commit charge is relatively high when AVAST is running ?

[Eddy]

XP tasks manager is not showing the right amount of memory used for applications/services.
This has been explained in another thread on this board.

[drjster]

Process Explorer (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/ProcessExplorer.html) shows similar results: the commit charge when AVAST is running is notably higher.

[DavidR]

Are you comparing like for like?

These Avs all work differently, have different modules and protection levels are they all checking your email, web shield, p2p, etc. etc. So a simple comparison of memory usage (no matter how the figure is obtained) may well be misleading.

[drjster]

Are you comparing like for like?

These Avs all work differently, have different modules and protection levels are they all checking your email, web shield, p2p, etc. etc. So a simple comparison of memory usage (no matter how the figure is obtained) may well be misleading.

I compared them 2 ways: in their default modes and with only
the resident on-access scanners/monitors enabled. Each way showed AVAST using approximately 20% more memory then the least memory intensive program.

Let me emphasize that AVAST ran flawlessly on my machine with no noticeable  slowdown in my PC's performance.  I was impressed.   

[lukor]

Is shared memory counted once or every time in each process?

[drjster]

Is shared memory counted once or every time in each process?

I wasn't looking at each process nor do I know the answer to your question. I was simply reading the commit charge total shown in XP's task manager and Process Explorer immediately after a restart.

[lukor]

Is shared memory counted once or every time in each process?

I wasn't looking at each process nor do I know the answer to your question. I was simply reading the commit charge total shown in XP's task manager and Process Explorer immediately after a restart.

You seemed to be concerned about this number being too high so I assumed you have some reason why you do think they are bad. I don't know their exact meaning too. Sorry.