PassMark Software, Antivirus & Internet Security

[Scarecrow Man]

System Impact Performance benchmark testing was carried on twenty-four Antivirus and Internet Security products from various vendors between September and November 2007. The current generation of products, available as of October 31 2007, were tested. Measurements were made against five different metrics (6 in the case of some products) on a low range, resource challenged, PC running XPsp2. The performance metrics measured were:

• Boot time
  
• Scan speed
  
• UI launch speed
  
• Memory utilization
  
• HTTP download speed (Internet Security products only)
  
• IE launch / browsing speed
  

No attempt was made to measure the effectiveness of threat detection, as this aspect of the products is covered by other industry benchmarks such as Virus Bulletin and AV-Comparatives.org. This report is solely focused on measuring how responsive the application are and by how extensively the applications utilize the resources of the machine.

http://www.passmark.com/ftp/Antivirus-Perf...Testing-Ed2.pdf

Quick overview:

--Anti-Virus--

Avast 5/5

AVG Free 5/5

Avira AV 5/5

BitDefender AV v11 4/5

F-Secure AV 2008 2/5

G-Data AV 2008 3/5

Kaspersky AV 7 4/5

McAfee AV 08 4/5

Norton AV 2008 5/5

Panda AV 2008 4/5

Trend Micro AV/AS 2008 4/5

Webroot SS AV/AS 5.5 4/5

ZoneAlarm AV 7.1 4/5

--Internet Security--

Agnitum Outpost Security Suite 2007 3/5

BitDefender Total Security 2008 4/5

F-Secure IS 2008 2/5

G-Data IS 2008 3/5

Kaspersky IS 7 4/5

McAfee TP 08 3/5

Norton IS 2008 5/5

Panda IS 2008 3/5

Trend Micro IS 2008 4/5

ZoneAlarm IS 7.1 5/5

[andsome]

They tested a very very low number of programs. If you want comprehensive tests giving regular results over a number of years, the Virus bulletin is far superior. :D

Virus Bulletin.