It is likely that many have already noticed that when installing a certain antivirus, the PC became slower to carry out its activities. Thinking along these lines, would the antivirus impact game performance? This question makes sense if we think that every second in a competitive game counts, making the difference between winning or failing in a match.
To be sure about the result of this experiment, the ideal is to test several antivirus alternatives and compare them with the performance of a computer without antivirus installed. With that in mind, the chillblast notebook and desktop developer performed tests on a notebook with the following configurations:
- CPU Intel Core i7 6700HQ Quad Core
- 16 GB DDR4 2400 MHz memory
- GeForce GTX 970M 3GB video card
- 850 TB Samsung 1 EVO SSD
- Windows 10 Home [1803]
In the test, the performance of the computer was measured with 6 different antiviruses:
- Norton Internet Security
- McAfee Internet Security
- Kaspersky Internet Security
- Bull Guard Internet Security
- AVG Internet Security
- Windows Defender (free antivirus that comes with Windows 10)
In addition to the tests with the virus protection programs mentioned above, the notebook's performance without any antivirus was also analyzed. Between one test and another, the computer was formatted with a clean installation of Windows, to make sure that there would be no signs of the previously installed antivirus.
The test
To test the gaming performance with each antivirus program, the 3DMark benchmark program was used. The test selected to measure performance was Fire Strike, a demanding DirectX 3 11D benchmark test that often delivers a reliable score. In addition, care was taken to repeat the test 3 times on each antivirus to get an average of the results.
But the tests didn't stop there, as the intention was to show the widest variety of situations possible so that the user of some antivirus has a more real idea of the result. So the game F1 2017 was used, which has a useful benchmark function in its graphics settings menu. The tests were repeated 3 times on each antivirus, as was done before.
During the tests, to make the situation even more realistic, Steam, Skype, Microsoft Excel and three open tabs in the Chrome browser were left in the background.
The results
The result using the 3DMark benchmark program, with the Fire Strike test, showed that the best performance of all was with BullGuard Internet Security, even compared to the computer without any antivirus installed. It is believed that this result was due to the "Game Booster" functionality, which promises to optimize the Windows power profile and/or the memory usage of applications in the background. However, the results did not stop impressing and Norton, together with Windows Defender, obtained excellent performance, even compared to the machine without antivirus, contrary to many who did not put much faith in these two antiviruses.
Going to the tests with the F1 2017 game, again we have BullGard performance above all other results (even in the scenario with the machine without antivirus), followed by Windows Defender and then Norton. The rest of the tested antiviruses performed considerably lower than those mentioned above.
Conclusion
By choosing the right antivirus, it is very likely that you will not experience any noticeable performance difference in games. It is reasonable to say that BullGuard Internet Security antivirus, Windows Defender and Norton Internet Security have little or no impact on the frame rate per second (FPS) in games. However, AVG, Kaspersky, and McAfee virus protection programs had a noticeable impact during game graphics testing.
