> > I have always benchmarked my system (3DMark or ?) using the real
settings
> > and apps. Eg. Virus scanner & firewall on. Seems silly to me to tweak
for
> > unrealistic speed.
> > /Jens
> You run your games with virus scanner and firewall on? You shouldn't,
waste
> of resources. Get Enditall 2.0 and shut down all that stuff when running
> games.
Sorry, I consider security to be far more important than ***. Turning off
the firewall is plain silly,- especially if you are using a fullscreen game
which hinders your ability to see what is going on in your pc. (Not that you
always can see attacks - far from it).
A good virus scanner will not hamper your performance,- at least not on my
system. Most games are graphics card limited (fillrate etc.). Thus you do
have cpu power to spare. And even if you didn't, how many files are opened
when you are in the game? And will adding 1% to the disk access time really
make a difference? In my opinion, there is a negligible performance hit - if
any! The very human worst case scenario is returning to VROC after a race
and checking your mail w/o turning on your AV scanner first. If you are
using Outlook Express the preview window can be abused to run viral scripts,
unless you have disabled active scripting in OE. Too bad, so sad, bye-bye.
In conclusion, if you can't run your games without shutting down your AV and
FW, you should consider reducing the graphics (or other) settings. Otherwise
you're playing with fire and deserve what you get! YOU were the one who
wanted +1 fps instead of security. But the choice is your to make,- I've
made mine.
Finally, this pc is actually rather secure as all external network
connections are routed to another pc, but occasionally I switch IPs and I'd
rather not risk forgetting to turn my security back on.
Cheers,
Jens
