Raymond.CC Blog

When AVG FREE 8 was released, I was really excited to check it out because they’ve combined spyware protection into to their antivirus software. However I immediately felt that it was slowing my computer after installing it. I’ve installed AVG FREE 8 on a clean Windows XP SP3 and it already took up 38MB of memory on idle. When I launch a full scan, the AVG 8 memory usage can go up to 80MB.

There were people complaining that AVG 8 takes slightly longer to do a complete scan compared to v7.5. I believe that is because the latest AVG 8 scans for spywares as well. There are also people who reports that AVG 8 slows down whole system, causing crashes and also web browsing is way slower because of LinkScanner.

Since AVG FREE 8 is quite problematic for many users, why not just uninstall AVG 8 and use AVG 7.5? Here’s a memory usage comparison between AVG 8 and AVG 7.5.

AVG FREE 7.5
avgamsvr.exe (AVG Alert Manager) 368K
avgupsvc.exe (AVG Update Service) 496K
avgemc.exe (AVG E-Mail Scanner) 1040K
avgcc.exe (AVG Control Center) 300K
Total Memory Usage: 2204K

AVG FREE 8
avgtray.exe (AVG Tray Monitor) 6116K
avgemc.exe (AVG E-Mail Scanner) 460K
avgwdsvc.exe (AVG Watchdog Service) 1204K
avgrsx.exe (AVG Resident Shield Service) 30464K
Total Memory Usage: 38244K

I am shocked to see that AVG 7.5 took only 2204K (2.2MB) memory on idle compared to AVG 8 which takes up 38244K (38MB). In AVG 8, the process that took most of the memory usage is avgrsx.exe (AVG Resident Shield Service) with 30084K out of 38244K. I’ve personally seen avgrsx.exe takes up 100mb of memory on a friend’s laptop. Different computer with different software installed and running in background can cause the memory usage to go up.

I’ve tried tweaking AVG 8 configuration by disabling nearly everything and only left the real-time antivirus & antispyware scanning enabled but the memory usage for AVG Resident Shield Service will not go down. Disabling the AVG LinkScanner fixes the slow website loading problem through.

If you think that using AVG 7.5 is the solution, then you’ll have to consider this. Michael from AVG Team announced in AVG forum that support for AVG 7.5 Free Edition is planned to end on 31st August 2008 which means only virus definition updates will continue until the end date. No more virus updates are planned for after that date. As for “program” updates, they’ve already no longer provide any update fixes. For those that are using AVG 7.5 Paid version, it will be supported until 31/12/08. I am not sure how true it is because AVG has previously mentioned that updates for your current AVG Free will not be available after May 31st 2008. AVG 7.5 is being replaced by AVG 8.0 and you will have to upgrade to stay safe. Then it was extended until June 25th 2008 and now August 31st 2008.

Many people used to like AVG because it is free, lightweight and easy on resources. Now that the latest AVG 8 is an elephantware and AVG 7.5 is set to retire end of this month, I believe many people has and will say goodbye to AVG and use other alternatives such as Avira AntiVir Personal 8 which only uses 10072K memory on idle. Although the memory usage cannot be compared to AVG 7.5, but Avira is still one of the lightest free antivirus with very good known and unknown virus detection.

So if you’re faced with this dilemma, give Avira AntiVir Personal 8 a try and I am sure you’ll like it better than AVG FREE 8. Before installing Avira, make sure you uninstall AVG first to avoid any conflicts. I am sure AVG Technologies realize that their latest AVG 8 is a bloatware and hopefully their next major release will be lighter and uses less memory.