Microsoft Defender is the built-in anti-virus function of Windows. Therefore, compared with other third-party anti-virus software, many people may think that it should occupy the least amount of system performance. In fact, it may be completely opposite. Recently, a foreign security testing agency released its latest performance test report, which tested a total of 17 anti-virus software. Microsoft Defender actually has a huge impact on PC system performance, ranking second from the bottom.
Foreign testing agencies found that Microsoft Defender has a great impact on PC system performance
Recently, the foreign AV-Comparatives foreign security testing agency announced the performance test results for April 2022 to understand the impact of various anti-virus software currently on the market on system performance. The test platform is an Intel i3 processor, 4GB RAM and SSD hard drive. The operating system version is equipped with the latest Windows 10 21H2 64-bit. In addition to PCMark 10 benchmarking, there is also AV-Comparatives’ own testing process, including the following activities:
- File copy
- Save / Unarchive
- Install/remove apps
- Launch the application
- Download archive
- Browse website
After the test, all anti-virus software will be rated as slow, normal, fast and very fast, so that users can quickly know how well each product performs.
The list of 17 anti-virus software is as follows, whether it is the well-known Avast, ESET, Kaspersky, Trend Micro, Norton, Microsoft Defender, or VIPRE, K7, TotalAV, etc. that few people in Taiwan have heard of, some anti-virus software uses free versions:
The figure below shows the ratings of each test. You can see that Microsoft Defender only received the lowest “slow” rating when running file copy for the first time. In addition, the installed applications were not high, only average:
The PCMark 10 running score is 100 points, and all 17 anti-virus software have scores of 95 or above, and their performance is similar.
According to the final total score, K7 performed the best with only 1.6 points. Panda was also good, followed by ESET, GATA, NortonLifeLock, McAfee, etc. The top 9 were rated as three-star recommendations by AV-Comparatives, and the 10th to 15th were rated as two-stars:
Microsoft Defender ended up just ahead of Total Defense, with an impact score of 24.6, and therefore only one star:
This also means that if you don’t want anti-virus software to affect system performance too much, it is recommended to install third-party anti-virus software.
Of course, in this era of increasingly powerful computer hardware, this impact may not be felt. For those who care, you can try using Microsoft Defender first, and then switch to third-party anti-virus software for a while to see if there is any difference.
Source: KOCPC Chinese