Why Antivirus Software Uses More RAM

Why Antivirus Software Uses More RAM

There are a lot of resources across the broader internet that will guide you to the best tips related to speeding up your computer by lowering the load on your hardware resources.

Well, it is true if it comes to the hardware to reduce the load as much as possible. But certainly, when it comes to the RAM (Random Access Memory) the same thing can’t prove to be a legit option to fo so.

After all, your computer RAM (Random Access Memory) is the fastest component of your PC – a short term memory that is super fast and is used to boost to speed up the performance of your PC.

To give you a look at how HDD and SDD work. HDD is like an old school hard disk with the spinning disks (HDD) normally allows the transfer rate between 80-160 MB/sec.

On the contrary side, an SDD (Solid State Disk) that uses memory chips having the same things in common to those of SD-card in your smartphone, facilitates speed of around 200/400 MB/second.

While, when we talk about the RAM which does not store memory without the power turned-on, provides speed up to 10-20 GB/second. When compared that’s almost 100 times faster than your hard disk.

So, if you are system architecture, then RAM would be the obvious and most favorable choice for you to run programs.

Usage of RAM by Windows

Windows reads all the programs from the system’s hard disk and sets them into Random Access Memory. Your CPU can efficiently access all your programs from the RAM.

Simply, if you use so many programs at once with all of them having bigger data stored in your PC then your RAM will get completely utilized by those programs 7 & For Further Information, I would like to Suggest antimalware service executables for this.

Recently, the RAM comes typically between 2,4 and 16 GB storage. But in some cases, your Windows PC may require more RAM than what you physically might have installed & Also Require Some Product keys for Windows.

If that is the case then you do not need to worry, as the Microsoft developers were pretty much well aware of that at the early stage and to avoid the risk they introduced “Page File”.

The simple rule of data in RAM is not used more often is written into a ‘Virtual RAM’ file on the hard disk.

Note: The data is hidden at “c: pagefile.sys”, so you get some extra RAM space.

Any data required from virtual RAM needs to be read from the slow hard disk. So, whenever your PC remains significantly slow then at that time, don’t be concerned as it may have begun to exchanging data to the page file.

How do Antivirus or Anti Malware consume So much RAM?

People often complain about software usage consumes too much RAM.

To cope up with that, detecting malware by finding the patterns like signature and fingerprints are not that clumsy process, but when there are a vast number of where antivirus software need many signatures in that case.

Some of the antiviruses use more than 7+ million malware signatures, which requires more than 200 megabytes.

Sounds a huge space, right? Unfortunately, it’s not that much as it equals to 28 bytes on an average that an antivirus uses to make sure if the file is Good or Bad.

To make it simple: Just imagine that an antivirus malware scanner goes through 7 million signature on an estimate and checks approx 300k files roughly on your hard disks.

It just takes a few seconds to get it done!

On a technical note, all that checked files must be:

  • Stored at a safe location if you want a great detection ratio rather than a low malware detection.

  • Operated quickly to be scanned for each new file that enters into your PC.

  • It needs to be fast and quick so that it does it work without you being even noticed that something was scanned in the background.

Ultimately, the place that does that work is probably the RAM (Random Access Memory)

Hidden Secret of Antivirus Software

To make a huge program look like a small one; there are 2 important techniques:

  • Use the Page File: As mentioned previously, Windows places less often used parts of programs onto the slower hard disk. To get placed on the pagefile regular intervals, programs can force that process to be displayed as very low memory usage. In turn, the thinking period is of 1-3 seconds when you access the program.
  • It Uses System Drivers: The Windows Task Manager displays only the active program and services, not the drivers. They are loaded directly by the OS for certain core functionalities.

Turning off memory usage optimization in the main settings can not initiate software to begin the exchange to the page file which may finally result in an overall increase in the performance of the RAM.

What could be the reason behind the number of threats is increasing but the Memory Utilization remains the same?

As the number of threats is increasing almost two times a year, a good thing about malware is that most of the samples differ just in several bytes from the malware families.

Hence, an antivirus software better detects a huge number of threats with less number of signatures. As a result, the number of signatures stays stable even though there is an increased number of threats.

Key Takeaways

Lastly, you can open your “Task Manager” and check how much of the RAM usage is done within your PC during your busy working hours on your computer.

Like this article? Feel free to share it on social media networks!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *