There is almost no doubt that previous versions of Norton that were high footprint have soured you. As mechBgon pointed out, that is no longer as true about Norton now.
But if you have 2 gigs of ram, a fast processor, a fast system bus, and a fast video card, there is little you can do to improve your gaming abilities without making major hardware investments in a new computer. And I assume you have found, from experience, that running a bloatware security system does hurt your gaming.
First, you need to face the following facts. In the world of gaming, there will always be that new game(s) that won't run on your system even with zero system security in place. But at the same time, there are many many games that will run well on your system with no security running at the same time. And a slightly lesser amounts of games that will run well on your system with some security running at the same time. And that running no real time system security is always a giant risk. Because if you can't prevent an exploit, you will lose a lot of time removing the virus or trojan once it installs. Time lost from doing the gaming you enjoy.
So you have what amounts to a risk vs. reward problem.
I just told you what you the risks, but it seems to me, you have no damn idea of the rewards. Thats where benchmarking programs come in. Things that take no system resources until you open them up. You already have one such program called msconfig. ( go start---run--type msconfig ) Msconfig will give you a wealth of information about how much ram each running program consumes and give you an ability to prevent programs starting up at boot time. Step it up a notch and try freeware benchmarks like Everest 2.2 or pcwizard 2008 that will give you system benchmarks like, rams speeds, HDD stats, and video frames per second. And may also suggest where your system bottlenecks are. And also let you know what temperatures you are running and your over clocking potential.
Once you are thus loaded for bear, the gasp hard work starts. You can try various security programs starting up or not starting up and find out how much it hurts your gaming.
With both a seat of the pants feel and hard bench mark numbers to go with it. You are better off trying that with freeware because you paid nothing if you get rid of it.
Right now, probably the best paid AV is Kaspersky, which combines excellent detection rates with frequent small updates. But during those updates, it may kill your gaming. But if you can disable automatic updates while gaming, it might be worth paying for it. But I would still recommend a freeware AV first.
yeah.
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