Microsoft Defender (formerly known as Windows Defender) is the default antivirus software in Windows 10 and 11 – which does the job for many users who don’t prefer to burden performance by installing a third-party antivirus program… But is it true? that competing antivirus programs are necessarily more greedy on the side of system resources?
The latest benchmark produced by the independent site AV-Comparatives seems to debunk this assertion. In its April 2022 test, the site shows that under Windows 10 Professional (the test machine was configured with an Intel Core i3, 4 GB of RAM and SSD storage), Windows Defender is actually one of the antivirus solutions that consume the most resources with a significant impact on the behavior of the machine.
No, Microsoft Defender is not the best antivirus for those who want to get the most out of their PC
To reach this conclusion, AV-Comparatives performed various common operations with Microsoft Defender, or another antivirus solution, configured to operate normally. A total of 17 antivirus solutions were tested in this way. The operations in question consisted of copying, compressing and extracting archives, installing / uninstalling programs, browsing the internet and then launching applications while the antivirus was running.
In addition to these tests, AV-Comparatives ran the Mark 10 Professional PC benchmark suite with each solution. By far the best antivirus solution for performance is currently K7 in this type of configuration. The software received the highest rating in all tests conducted by AV-Comparatives. ESET, G Data and Panda are not far behind with some good marks but none without fault.
Among the antivirus solutions we recommend, Norton, McAfee, Bitdefender, Avast et AVG all come away with excellent scores – knowing that these antivirus programs are also extremely well regarded in terms of their more advanced features and unparalleled detection rates.
We note that Norton 360 subscriptions, for example, give access to a real unlimited VPN service which allows both to protect your connection in public places but also to unblock access to certain geo-blocked sites such as Netflix US.
Nevertheless, the most interesting is undoubtedly to compare the scores of the solutions above with the extreme impact of Microsoft Defender.
Microsoft Defender emerges as the 2nd antivirus with the most impact on performance, just behind TotalDefense. Which may seem like a shame for such a well-integrated Windows solution. But that is partly explained by the competition’s more advanced technologies to detect threats without compromising performance too much.
All is not dark, far from it: in detail, Microsoft Defender sometimes delivers good scores such as following the test of launching applications, browsing the Internet or downloading files. Nevertheless the software has a very negative impact when copying files or in combination with installing applications.
For gamers, it is therefore better to finally turn to other solutions to finally be able to deactivate Defender in favor of a competing solution. Note that we have negotiated very attractive rates for Presse-citron readers. To take advantage of it, click on one of the banners below:
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