Looking for gaming friendly anti-virus software

[alisbin]

hey mates,
in the past every time i've tried a virus-scan, its ended up taking up lots of system resources even when not doing a scan, which very negatively affected my gaming life. so, what i'm looking for is an anti-virus that either uses almost no resources when its not doing a full scan, or that can be set to a sort of sleep mode when i game so it doesn't interfere or slow things down. i haven't tried any recently, but below is a list of ones i've tried in the past.
kaspersky, avg, norton, mcafee

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

NOD32 is pretty lightweight and is one of the best AVs around, but it'll cost you. Microsoft's Security Essentials is free, also has a relatively small footprint, and offers respectable coverage.

You could, of course, just disable the AV while playing -- or ditch your AV altogether.

 

[alisbin]

i've gone years without regular AV, i'm just seeing if there is a good option really, i'll look into both that you mentioned. as for disabling, some of the ones that i tried in the past wouldn't really disable, they would keep taking up their huge footprint...

 

[Route44]

Seconded on NOD32. Excellent protection with a light footprint and I have had it running while gaming without an issue.

The free versions of Avast and Avira are two other suggestions

 

[username123]

I haven't used NOD32 in a couple of years, but I wasn't pleased with its performance.
Avast 4.8 is game friendly and a good A/V program, I wouldn't mess with Avast 5.0 though, its got some problems, and it isn't game friendly.

With 4.8 you can turn off the pop-ups and you can manually suspend the updates while you' re playing the game.