Antivirus/Malware and Gaming

Hey Guys,

I realize this topic would be better suited in the 'Software' section of the forum, but I want opinions that relate specifically to gaming. I just got my new laptop and have never bothered with anti viruses in the past (having used a Mac for the past 5 years). Basically I just want to know what set ups you guys use to keep your laptops clean and if they affect gaming performance much (from having stuff running in the background). I don't know what to exleft as far as virus risk when downloading games (mainly from steam).

I gather that Windows Defender is not very effective, so I have been looking at Avast Free and Malwarebytes.

Again, sorry that this is not in the best section of the forum! Thanks.

 

^
spot on.

i use avast but the full version that comes with a lot of added protections including firewall and i also use malwarebytes.
free version is still good but make sure you have windows firewall activated.

in 3 years ive had 3 false/positives which were sorted within a few hours after reporting.
2 were for steam and the other was for blackberry. annoying at the time but kept me on my toes.
so far ive had no issue with playing any games whatsoever from steam/origin/uplay.

in last few months im getting a few popups asking me do i want to add a vpn and grime cleaner which of course is more money so lets hope they are not trying to scrape more money out of everyone as they will start losing respect after a while.

 

BitDefender Free is great. Very low resource usage and have yet to have a false positive. Best of all, it's FREE. Granted it's just a virus/malware real time detection and scan, but for me that's all I need. I do manual periodic scans with Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and sweeps with Glary Utilities.

 

Sane here, although I was of the understanding that if one ran the full suite of avast (minus VPN/grime fighter/system scanner) things like MS firewall/MBAM weren't warranted

 

MS firewall/MBAM aren't needed if you have another full suite.

 

I've been using Panda Free Antivirus (not the cloud version) for real-time protection and Malwarebytes as an on-demand scanner. No performance issues to speak of.

 

thats what i meant as OP was talking about the free version so it needs windows firewall.

 

Is the Avast firewall better than the Windows one? I mean enough to merit the $40 yearly fee?

Also, does the Avast software use a lot of resources? Or is it pretty light?

 

Truthfully, Mac and PC are not really different in this:
-You should have an external firewall (hopefully not belonging to your ISP) This can be your wireless device provided it has the capabilities and you take control of it and do not use the defaults. Change your admin password and the default network scheme. (don't use 10.0.0.1 or 192.168.0.1) You don't have to be really sneaky, just don't use the defaults. It is best to do some reading and close all ports you do not use.

-You should have a firewall up and running on each computer. Windows firewall is actually ok as long as you leave it on. Turn on the mac firewall (as it is off by default). You can use another software firewall if you find one that is better. The default firewalls are fairly decent at keeping intruders out, but lack the tools to keep track of unauthorized accesses going out. (say you get infected with a trojan, they won't notice the constant traffic out.)

-You should have an always-on memory-scanning anti-malware program that runs a full scan at regular intervals.
I like Avast! as it is game-aware, but bitdefender, AVG, and Avira are also good. If you have the money, I also like Malwarebytes paid version.
If you have a mac, ClamAV is nice.

-You should have a "second opinion" scanner that you run every so often manually. Malwarebytes free is my favorite.
(frankly one of the best anti-malware detection engines period IMHO)


As I have mentioned, Macs are actually more vulnerable than PCs at this time due to a flaw in their latest MacOS versions which allows full root access to an attacker. (which probably won't be patched until Jan 2015) If you still have your mac, you should be protecting it with even greater vigilance than your PC right now.

 

the $40 isnt for the firewall alone but the full package.

scroll down to compare Avast 2015 | Download Free Antivirus Software for Virus Protection

not a resource hog at all. i used to use avg but that became a nightmare and took forever to scan. so far avast has been very good and i can carry on doing whatever on computer without it dragging me down. ssd also helps for a much faster scan.

 

Use MBAM free for regular on-demand scans and practice Common Sense, i.e. stay away from pr0n, game, and movie torrents and scan every file you download from the Internet. Any full AV suite that does always-on background scanning is gonna have some measure of performance impact, however slight, especially on I/O throughput.

 

Avast free is enough.. if you want a firewall, use windows firewall..

 

I liked Bitdefender until it decided to start 'optimising' my system and turning off all animations and transparency effects to 'speed up' my laptop. Could never find the setting to stop it doing that. So when my renewal was due I switched over to Kaspersky with a student discount.

 

I've used ESET for many years, I find it lightweight and unobtrusive. It's not free though.

 

Dangerous advice IMHO. The reason you want a background scanner is detection of malware as it enters memory. No amount of common sense protects you completely as many attacks are socially engineered to work on even above-average users. Really nothing protects you completely, and the more layers you have, the more likely you keep yourself protected. Having BOTH common sense and a memory-resident scanner is the wisest choice for pretty much everyone.

I do agree that some exceptional people can get by on their "not-so-common-sense" and a rigorous schedule of manual scans, but this means that you are the only user of that computer and know pretty much exactly what you are doing. We cannot expect even above-average users to be at that level of knowledge.

Most people's computers are massively overpowered for the vast amount of things they do with the possible exception of gaming. If you just have to have that extra frame-per-second or two, temporarily disable the resident anti-malware. (and turn it back on afterwards)

In my case I tend to leave Avast! on. It is unobtrusive most of the time.

 

Er, no AV software will protect one from social engineering AKA user's own stupidity.

 

This is false... especially when we are dealing with well-educated people who just aren't IT people.
(example: elementary teachers often have master degrees or more... most are quite observant, just not computer security wise)

Fairly often the anti-malware program identifies the program while being loaded into RAM before the malware can disable the anti-malware and flashes an alert.

Also, sometimes just in "making the little checkered-square thing go away" (AVG) is enough to alert an average user that something is not right.

Again, we are talking about average to above average users... not the truly stupid.
Nothing fixes stupid.
They wouldn't listen to either of us anyway, they'd insist they were too smrt (not a typo) to listen to anyone.

However, part of not being stupid is finding an expert when you need one and experts recommending reasonable solutions for the audience at hand.

 

Personally, I use a combination of MSE and Malwarebytes (free). Every so often I might get a hit (usually a bad cookie or whatever), and that's taken care of quickly. MSE scans don't have an effect on my gaming (or, if it does, it's trivial); Malwarebytes (free) doesn't have automatic scanning, though I did once have the paid version and the same thing could be said about that.

 

I use MSE and Windows Firewall and so far all my computing and gaming been malware virus free.

 

OK, my bad. Replace 'stupidity' with 'gullibility'.

 

And has no proper software to tell you that you are malware and virus free...

Really? I haven't witnessed that behavior. Bitdefender Free just scans for viruses and that's it.