Question Claim back up to 6% performance of your Intel CPU by preventing Windows Defender from wasting CPU cycles

[igor_kavinski]

Windows Defender can Significantly Impact Intel CPU Performance, We have the Fix | TechPowerUp



AMD is not affected. Wow. Amazed that Intel is quiet on this issue.

Not an issue with my i7-4770. Maybe it seems to affect only Core 8th gen and later CPUs.

 

[Tech Junky]

I don't disable it I delete it from safe mode or livecd.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I don't disable it I delete it from safe mode or livecd.

Delete Windows Defender?

 

[Tech Junky]

Yup. It's more of a PITA than a help in most cases beyond the 6% CPU cycles.

Anything Windows thinks is helpful tends to be an annoyance.

 

[igor_kavinski]

It's more of a PITA than a help in most cases

TBH, this is the first time I'm hearing about Windows Defender causing issues. I normally leave it on and recommend to most people not to bother with any other antivirus since this is good enough in most cases. Can you please elaborate on the problems you've had with it?

 

[Glo.]

Delete Windows Defender?

Why not just delete Windows, altogether?

 

[nicalandia]

Why not just delete Windows, altogether?

That's right. SteamOS is basically all you need if all you do is Gaming with Windows. The Wine app can run 95% of Windows apps

 

[Tech Junky]

Wine doesn't work great with some of the apps I use otherwise I would have ditched Windows a long time ago. I have played around though as using Linux as the host and spin up Windows in a VM but, that's kind of annoying as well.

I run Linux on my server though to reduce downtime and work as a router among other things it's doing.

WDefENDer is always asking for updates / permissions / flagging files / deleting stuff I want to use... It's just an annoyance that is counter productive for ME. All of the bundled crap with it as well just gets in the way for someone that knows WTF they're doing.

 

[igor_kavinski]

WDefENDer is always asking for updates / permissions / flagging files / deleting stuff I want to use

Hope I'm not annoying you by asking too many questions but do you analyze malware for a living or something? In normal use, usually wdefender stays out of the way.

 

[Tech Junky]

I have a few things that set it off and outside of those it never picks up anything worthwhile. Recovery if something does happen take a couple of minutes to reinstall or boot from backup. There's so much bundled into "defender".

 

[AdamK47]

I disable Windows Defender Real-Time Protection through group policy.

 

[Markfw]

I disable Windows Defender Real-Time Protection through group policy.

And what protection do you have to replace defender ?

 

[Tech Junky]

And what protection do you have to replace defender ?

I don't see why everyone gets hung up on protection. Most of this is baked into browsers these days unless you're using external drives in which you could pick something up from someone else. A little common sense goes a long ways with not getting infected with something.

Don't click on stuff you don't know and you're 99% of the way there.

 

[Markfw]

I don't see why everyone gets hung up on protection. Most of this is baked into browsers these days unless you're using external drives in which you could pick something up from someone else. A little common sense goes a long ways with not getting infected with something.

Don't click on stuff you don't know and you're 99% of the way there.

While I agree with what you have said, abandoning all protection seems a little extreme.

 

[Tech Junky]

abandoning all protection seems a little extreme

Why?

It's mostly a money grab and performance dropper. I've only had one instance where it might have caught something I downloaded intentionally that turned out to be swiping passwords when I stated getting alerts from banks to change the PW. That's where the 2FA comes into play as that layered approach to protecting things.

 

[AdamK47]

And what protection do you have to replace defender ?

Nothing that run constantly in the background.

I invoke my own full or quick scans.

 

[eek2121]

Why?

It's mostly a money grab and performance dropper. I've only had one instance where it might have caught something I downloaded intentionally that turned out to be swiping passwords when I stated getting alerts from banks to change the PW. That's where the 2FA comes into play as that layered approach to protecting things.

Windows defender is free.

As others have said, during normal operation (absent the bug above) you should not notice it. I do not recommend NOT running any antivirus protection. Humans make mistakes. That antivirus could be your only line of defense when you eventually do make a mistake.

 

[Tech Junky]

Windows defender is free.

I was speaking of ALL options not just defunder.

I have multiple backups and most stuff is stored on the network not locally anyway and that system is running Linux which is considerably safer than Windows ever will be.

Having played with tech since the 90's I'm fairly confident in my ability to avoid dumb crap spread over the internet.

 

[DrMrLordX]

Windows Defender is probably one of MS' best innovations for modern Windows systems. Originally Defender kind of sucked, but it has grown to the point that it can handle a lot of malware threats, especially stuff that's been in the wild for a few months. It's a huge target for malware authors, but at the same time, MS is actually doing a good job of updating it.

I used to recommend stuff like Kaspersky (lol) or even Avast years and years ago when Defender wasn't as entrenched as it is. Now a lot of commercial products do very little other than hook into Defender or provide protection that is really no better.

MS has created so many loopholes and vulnerabilities in their own OSes over the years that it's about darn time they took responsibility for securing their own OS.

Recently I had a relative click on a malicious link in an email. Of course the site loaded a bunch of crap onto her Win11 machine when she clicked the link. The Defender service held up - almost - and seemed to have prevented a serious infection, though some core OS components were damaged to the point that it was not feasible for me to recover the install. I had to do a fresh install (repair installs weren't working, and eventually the OS became unbootable). But the main thing is, ClamAV and other "offline" scanners couldn't find any malicious files remaining on the drive even after the attempted infection. It's unlikely that sensitive data was scraped off the drive (there wasn't much, but there was a little). Defender kind of did its job.

For expert users on Linux, of course Defender seems like undesirable cruft. But under normal circumstances, Defender comes with a lot lower overhead than standard McAfee/Norton-type AV services, and its being updated by the jerks who created (and continue to create) vulnerabilities for Windows in the first place.

It's odd that Defender would be playing badly with Intel CPUs. MS and Intel need to put their heads together to fix the problem ASAP, assuming they haven't done so already. Nice of Glynn to do something about it in the meantime.

 

[RnR_au]

Been running a Windows 7 PC unpatched for a long time. But its not my daily driver. Its my gaming boxen. My daily driver is a Mint linux install on a laptop. I kinda get the benefits of both systems. But yeah, non-technical folk should have Defender running 24/7 or even better, a Linux setup. I've had my parents using Linux for over a decade now with zero issues.

 

[Tech Junky]

As @RnR_au suggested Linux is a smaller target and it's a lot simpler than it used to be to setup. It's easier to patch and maintain. I do a kernel update weekly to plug the holes and improve the performance but your average user might only do that once a month through the automated processes. The only drawback can be popular programs not working on it and needing to run a VM or wine or some other compatibility software.

 

[bononos]

Why?

It's mostly a money grab and performance dropper. I've only had one instance where it might have caught something I downloaded intentionally that turned out to be swiping passwords when I stated getting alerts from banks to change the PW. That's where the 2FA comes into play as that layered approach to protecting things.

Is running an AV especially Defender so taxing on resources? Even fairly low end cpus should be able to handle AV's especially Defender.
Even on PCs that doesn't have many downloadable programs, theres the issue of a developer's websites getting hacked and their downloads getting injected with viruses. And I'd rather stop security issues much earlier than waiting for banks to start sending me alert messages.

 

[Tech Junky]

taxing

It's not that it's taxing it's that it's a PITA to me.

 

[Thibsie]

It's not that it's taxing it's that it's a PITA to me.

Defender that you finally configured OKish and that's reset to default, even exclusions etc. 'cos Windows got updated ?
That's been a pita indeed.

 

[PingSpike]

While I agree with what you have said, abandoning all protection seems a little extreme.

That's my gut as well, but then I remember that I've been running Windows for over 20 years and I can't think of a single virus alert I received during that time that wasn't a false positive so I'm not sure it's really as crazy a position as it sounds.