Gaming best anti virus program

[snakepliskin2334]

hello all i was wondering in your own opinion what would be the best anti virus program for us gamers that dont slow down the pc at all but yet still maintaining the same level of security as a powerful anti virus

 

[The Catboy]

Whenever I am using Windows, I use Avast antivirus and it's the best I have used thus far

 

[snakepliskin2334]

alright i will keep that one in mind (:

 

[pokefloote]

I use Avast as well, never had any problems and the very few times I happened to stumble upon a malicious site it caught them.

As for not slowing down your PC, I guess it depends on how good your hardware is. If it's a standard pc then it shouldn't have any impact on performance or anything. (:

 

[Rydian]

What slows down games is often the scheduled scan, and any AV can do that. Turn the scheduled scan off (without disabling anything else) and you should be fine.

 

[FAST6191]

There have been a few such threads in the past but I will go again.

By best I assume you mean cheap and preferably free (some of the corporate level stuff is pretty nice but pricey and you will hate it). For clients big and small unless they want to spring for a corporate grade one I usually use microsoft security essentials (better yet it is free and unlike most other free ones free for business up to 10 users) as it is quite lightweight and does the job. Norton and mcafee are on my always avoid list (norton are better than they were but nothing special and certainly not worth the price of entry) so much so that I carry around the standalone tools to uninstall them.
ESET NOD32 and http://www.kaspersky.com/ are the runners up and probably slightly better than MSE but not enough to justify paying in most situations.

I will usually have an inactive install of Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware and if I can spare the ram teatimer http://www.safer-networking.org/en/faq/33.html as it can help stop programs from putting startup entries and such in.

However antivirus is not a security solution- generally if the antivirus has to ping up you have failed at security so to this end I will suggest you trick out your browser and maybe system to prevent it from being necessary.

Step one that works everywhere is get a good hosts file and install that, it cuts down on a serious chunk of stuff. I have not checked quite as a much as I should to see who does the nice updated stuff right now as the stuff to come does well but http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/ is a rough idea and quite nice. This is what the bulk peer guardian does although I consider peer guardian to be a near useless program (it certainly fails miserably at the primary function) and not worth the resources on any machine.

Approximately the same for chrome although chrome is not a nice for extensions.
Adblock plus- do it.
Greasemonkey combined with a few scripts for things.
Beef taco- blocks cookies from advert networks among other things.
Ghostery- the ones I am about to mention will frustrate you no end until you get them set up or you run it in risky mode and. Anyway this blocks a lot of nasty things in addition to adblock.

As promised the ones that are awesome but harder to config properly (read you will probably to uncheck things when visiting a new site).
Noscript- disables javascript and plugins as well as giving you other security measures (checks and will block stuff like flash until you give it the go ahead).
If I am feeling especially flash http://blitzableiter.recurity.com/ will be added to sanitize flash applications.
Requestpolicy- will block requests outside the site, great for adverts and if you have a site that is riddled with injected nonsense.

Firewall- can be nice but windows or OS stock one combined with the fact you are probably behind a router which has a firewall anyway I would not bother with an extra one unless you are going to go hardware firewall.

Sandboxing or virtual machine. Use these to run suspect programs or programs you would rather not be able to access parts of the machine.
http://www.sandboxie.com/ is nice although not foolproof
virtual machines. Anything you like really, virtualbox works for me for day to day stuff.

On top of this if you can then do run on a limited rights user and leave UAC running if you are on vista or newer.

Anything I have after this is usually to customise machines, absolutely crazy security (whitelisting programs and such) and to remove infections rather than prevent it.

 

[pokefloote]

^ Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware saved my ass once.
I forgot the details but for some reason my AV at the time couldn't get to whatever was messing with my pc.
I used this and it runs something before all of windows even boots up, and removed it.

 

[Rydian]

Most AV programs won't remove malware for various reasons, which is why malwarebytes is suggested alongside it.

 

[Hielkenator]

ubuntu OS

 

[Originality]

My Kaspersky licence runs out in 6 days. It's cheaper than NOD, so I prefer it to NOD even thou I've heard NOD actually has slightly better detection rates. The only AV better is industrial stuff (like SOPHOS, if that's what it was called).

I detest McAffee and Norton, and laugh whenever I hear someone uses AVG. AVG is the weakest AV I've ever encountered, and is relatively easy to either cripple or hijack (for viruses that is).

MSE is rather minimal, and has limited support outside the user environment (e.g. Getting it to run properly in safe mode is a pain and a half). Still, it's free and works alright, so it's easy to recommend. I'll still be renewing Kaspersky though.

 

[thiefb0ss]

Kaspersky or Norton.

 

[the_randomizer]

Norton > McAffee. McAffee somehow jacked up my Windows boot processes the last time I used it and I have detested it ever since, I use Norton since I get it for free due to my being a Comcast customer, so I can't complain. AVG was a nightmare since it hardly gave me the protection I sought when I last used it.

 

[scruffman]

I would say Eset nod32 together with Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware. Been using it for years.

 

[Sicklyboy]

I can vouch for Avast as well. I use it and put it on all computers I build/repair.

 

[kylster]

Kaspersky or Norton.

Norton > McAffee. McAffee somehow jacked up my Windows boot processes the last time I used it and I have detested it ever since, I use Norton since I get it for free due to my being a Comcast customer, so I can't complain. AVG was a nightmare since it hardly gave me the protection I sought when I last used it.

^ Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware saved my ass once.
I forgot the details but for some reason my AV at the time couldn't get to whatever was messing with my pc.
I used this and it runs something before all of windows even boots up, and removed it.

@[member='thiefb0ss']: Kaspersky is great and even has an trial reset application available for windows albeit becomes very annoying having to run it every 30days or befor; Norton on the other hand I've never favored since it always seemed to integrate itself into the OS so well that you can't just uninstall it but you have to go online and download an Norton uninstaller application. Just seems like a waste of time, plus I had a friend at geek squad and this is how they want to sell you AV: Norton -> McAfee -> TrendMicro -> Kaspersky, etc.

@[member='the_randomizer']: I would get something better even ESET v4 is better; some say it's even better then ESET v5 who knows but I know it's not a resource hog and there are applications for windows that allows you use it for free if you Google hard enough

@[member='pokefloote']: Glad to hear that Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware saved you but try using Microsoft Security Essentials but do not have both running at the same time & I will explain this.

Most if not all commercial Antivirus white-list virus from various agencies like the FBI, CIA, or companies who want to prey their dirty little hands all through your PC. It's recommended to have an open source antivirus installed and as pokefloote stated Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware saved his life. An open source AV will catch all those virus that your commercial AV has white-listed for what ever reason they incur. If you take this advice please do not run both at once but keep one as a regular everyday use and then disable it and run the other on demand maybe once a week.

 

[MelodieOctavia]

No love for AVG?

 

[pyromaniac123]

Not another one of these threads...

 

[Red_Gh0st]

AVG and MalWarebytes are a perfect combination

 

[Lucifer666]

I actually vote for not getting an anti-virus at all.
Just be careful while browsing the internet, and you're good.
No need for a CPU and RAM-eating program to ruin your experience.
As long as you watch out, you'll be fine.

But if you really want one, then I suggest Avira, which served me well. Note that if you're getting the free version, you'll get an ad in a window by itself (which you can simply close) every couple hours or so. But it's really good.

 

[Cyan]

For me a "good" antivirus is one with a lot of options.
I don't like MSE as the only option you have is the time of the scheduled update, and whether you want to submit private information (to statistics only?) to Microsoft or not.

I currently have NOD32, and I'm happy with it and its options.

I regret one thing, there's no "scan everything, prompt at the end" like Kaspersky has.
When it find something, you need to answer what you want to do in order to continue the scan process, while Kaspersky show you a list of found problem only at the end.



I like to have a software Firewall for outgoing connexions.
Windows or hardware Firewall/routers only block incoming connexions if not from your set ports, but software firewall also ask you if you want to allow outgoing connexion and detects hijacking of connexion through another programs which try to contact remote servers.
I like to know who is communication.


Unfortunately, since I have NOD32, all new connexions pass through the antivirus, and the firewall only see the antivirus as connected to internet, which for me is a flaw :/
There's no option to "not automatically use nod32 HTTP protection" for newly detected programs.


I'm using Peerguardian mainly to protect my LAN, adding a security by blocking unwanted IP.