Least cpu-intensive firewall and antivirus?

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casioculture

I noticed that most of my cpu usage when leaving my computer on while
it downloads a torrent is by either the firewall (sygate) or the
antivirus (avast). This is despite having an AMD64 processor (though
using regular windows xp - 32).

I'm not pleased at this. What are the least cpu-intensive firewall and
antivirus I could use?
 
casioculture said:
I noticed that most of my cpu usage when leaving my computer on while
it downloads a torrent is by either the firewall (sygate) or the
antivirus (avast). This is despite having an AMD64 processor (though
using regular windows xp - 32).

I'm not pleased at this. What are the least cpu-intensive firewall and
antivirus I could use?
Click to expand...

Definitely Kerio v2.1.5 for the firewall.

I'm happy with avast! as an antivirus, although most of my first line of
defense comes from myself rather than the software.
 
casioculture said:
I'm not pleased at this. What are the least cpu-intensive firewall and
antivirus I could use?
Click to expand...

No idea. With my 1200MHz Athlon, Kerio 4 uses a bit less than 1%.
AV-wise, avast! uses about 0.3%. If avast! is also used to monitor
email and web, add about the same for each. Not a big hit...

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dadiOH
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casioculture said:
I noticed that most of my cpu usage when leaving my computer on while
it downloads a torrent is by either the firewall (sygate) or the
antivirus (avast). This is despite having an AMD64 processor (though
using regular windows xp - 32).

I'm not pleased at this. What are the least cpu-intensive firewall and
antivirus I could use?
Click to expand...

If you really are seeing this then from what i remember from evaluating both
this isn't typical. I'd make sure you don't have a system problem or see if
somehow those programs got configured with bone-headed settings before
blindly changing things.
 
I noticed that most of my cpu usage when leaving my computer on while
it downloads a torrent is by either the firewall (sygate) or the
antivirus (avast). This is despite having an AMD64 processor (though
using regular windows xp - 32).

I'm not pleased at this. What are the least cpu-intensive firewall and
antivirus I could use?
Click to expand...
Sygate - smc.exe uses 13,000 kb on my machine

NOD32, which is very low on resource usage, uses 19,000 kb.

It is my impression that Avast takes more resources, but not a lot
more.

Louise
 
louise said:
Sygate - smc.exe uses 13,000 kb on my machine

NOD32, which is very low on resource usage, uses 19,000 kb.

It is my impression that Avast takes more resources, but not a lot
more.
Click to expand...

Hello, I'm not concerned about memory-usage. I have lots of memory.
It's cpu-usage when downloading a torrent.
 
casioculture said:
I noticed that most of my cpu usage when leaving my computer on while
it downloads a torrent is by either the firewall (sygate) or the
antivirus (avast). This is despite having an AMD64 processor (though
using regular windows xp - 32).

I'm not pleased at this. What are the least cpu-intensive firewall and
antivirus I could use?
Click to expand...

NOD32 2.5 for the AV - low CPU usage and good detection to boot
Windows Firewall (I know - it's only inbound)

Clive
 
casioculture said:
Hello, I'm not concerned about memory-usage. I have lots of memory.
It's cpu-usage when downloading a torrent.
Click to expand...

eTrust AV (the one year eval version) is using 8452 KB in memory....I'll see
if I can determine CPU usage
 
Joe Canuck said:
Definitely Kerio v2.1.5 for the firewall.

I'm happy with avast! as an antivirus, although most of my first line of
defense comes from myself rather than the software.
Click to expand...

Avast is the best. It guards my network with the tenacity
of a pit bull. If Avast, running on my gateway machine,
detects a virus, trojan, etc, in any file being transferred,
the program halts all network activity, until I log into the
gateway machine and acknowledge. Avast halts all
activity on the network to protect the machines on my
network. That is how good it is.
 
dadiOH said:
No idea. With my 1200MHz Athlon, Kerio 4 uses a bit less than 1%.
AV-wise, avast! uses about 0.3%. If avast! is also used to monitor
email and web, add about the same for each. Not a big hit...
Click to expand...

I gave up using avast! not because it missed threats or it used too much
cpu but because it used too much ram and it slowed the whole system down
(even when using the simple "pure-antivirus" mode). I am now using avg.
 
casioculture said:
I noticed that most of my cpu usage when leaving my computer on while
it downloads a torrent is by either the firewall (sygate) or the
antivirus (avast). This is despite having an AMD64 processor (though
using regular windows xp - 32).

I'm not pleased at this. What are the least cpu-intensive firewall and
antivirus I could use?
Click to expand...
not sure about least intensive anti-virus, but the least intensive firewall is 3cr990-tx-95 or 3cr990-tx-97, both are network cards with their own network processor and it has an embedded firewall, so it offloads all network activity from the processor to the network processor. I have the 3cr990-tx-95 and now i never lag on multiplayer games.
Maybe they'll create an antivirus processor so you could load the antivirus onto a seperate processor, and the main processor won't be used to scan anymore, freeing up system resources. but for now get 3cr990-tx-95 or 97 and you'll have a firewall that doesn't use cpu for around $10.
 
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