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Security on Gaming Only PC
- Thread starter Garretta
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Sure.
But I think a better question to ask is what can I do to prevent these "performance" machines from getting infected.
Stop it at the perimeter.
http://www.untangle.com/
I use untangle at the house and the office and I also have a few out in the wild. There is also a QOS feature so you can prioritize traffic. It has an antivirus/malware filter in it. Pretty neat.
Depending on the size of your network, you should be able to get by using untangle on an atom box. I personally have setup untangle on the atom 330. At the house, I run mine in ESXi on a c2d box.
Using windows firewall would also be a good idea to reduce the chances of infection.
Also, check out this:
http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
I use this on my work machine, I am pretty happy with it. It never pesters me and seems to be pretty light weight.
But I think a better question to ask is what can I do to prevent these "performance" machines from getting infected.
Stop it at the perimeter.
http://www.untangle.com/
I use untangle at the house and the office and I also have a few out in the wild. There is also a QOS feature so you can prioritize traffic. It has an antivirus/malware filter in it. Pretty neat.
Depending on the size of your network, you should be able to get by using untangle on an atom box. I personally have setup untangle on the atom 330. At the house, I run mine in ESXi on a c2d box.
Using windows firewall would also be a good idea to reduce the chances of infection.
Also, check out this:
http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/
I use this on my work machine, I am pretty happy with it. It never pesters me and seems to be pretty light weight.
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Any decent AV will NOT 'bog down' your system, but if your that paranoid, dont let it boot at startups and only do manual scans and updates
YeOldeStonecat
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Any partially decent gaming machine will be at least somewhat powerful, thus many of the lighter weight AV programs will not have a negative performance impact.
AntiVir, MSE, NOD32...those are a couple of examples of some good lightweight AV programs.
My current gaming rig that I'm typing from right now....it's old..quite old by "gaming" standards. The first generation Core 2 Duo, the e6700, 3 gigs of RAM, an old ATI xt1900 graphics. I run some heavier online FPS games....I use MSE. I don't even have to disable real time file protection...I don't feel the impact of MSE. I used to use NOD32 2.7, which was well known as one of the lightest AV programs out there, also used to use AntiVir. None slowed me down, I felt zero performance change if I disabled them or had them uninstalled.
There's simply no reason to run your PC bareback.
AntiVir, MSE, NOD32...those are a couple of examples of some good lightweight AV programs.
My current gaming rig that I'm typing from right now....it's old..quite old by "gaming" standards. The first generation Core 2 Duo, the e6700, 3 gigs of RAM, an old ATI xt1900 graphics. I run some heavier online FPS games....I use MSE. I don't even have to disable real time file protection...I don't feel the impact of MSE. I used to use NOD32 2.7, which was well known as one of the lightest AV programs out there, also used to use AntiVir. None slowed me down, I felt zero performance change if I disabled them or had them uninstalled.
There's simply no reason to run your PC bareback.
If you want to run without AV, I have a guide in my sig on hardening Windows Vista / 7 - specifically, I would run x64 Windows 7 or Vista, enable DEP and SEHOP for all processes and set UAC to max or run as standard user, each of which I explain in the guide.
But run benchmarks too, with AV and without AV, chances are there's no difference in FPS, only slightly longer load times.
But run benchmarks too, with AV and without AV, chances are there's no difference in FPS, only slightly longer load times.
You can always disable the real-time protection. That's what I usually do, but I also run MSE on my gaming PC and don't disable it anymore. It makes no difference.
Or you could just not install an AV anyways my reason being that viruses and trojans are your own damn fault, if you happen to get hit with a worm, then shame on you for not keeping your system patched and if it's a 0-day, then you were probably screwed anyways. Since you're not even going to browse the web, I find it highly unlikely that something would infect you without any user action.
I've heard reports that people were receiving trojans and viruses in MW2, but that's all they were, reports. Who knows if that's true.
Or you could just not install an AV anyways my reason being that viruses and trojans are your own damn fault, if you happen to get hit with a worm, then shame on you for not keeping your system patched and if it's a 0-day, then you were probably screwed anyways. Since you're not even going to browse the web, I find it highly unlikely that something would infect you without any user action.
I've heard reports that people were receiving trojans and viruses in MW2, but that's all they were, reports. Who knows if that's true.
This.
One of my rigs is even older, an AMD64 3200+ system. I've used AVG and MSE on it with no adverse affects whatsoever. Just disable any scheduled scans, that's it. Realtime protection is always running, and has never caused any delay, lag, or stutter.
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Some might say it's more fun or feels better. Myself, I feel better knowing I have some protection against all those nasties out in the wild.
I would insert some lame 1990's called joke but ehhh... It is just about 2010, hardware and software have advanced leaps and bounds over what was available a decade ago. ANYONE that still thinks AV software has a severe impediment on your gaming performance needs to adjust their tinfoil hat.
InvisiBill
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Just don't be stupid. Seriously.
I almost always run AV software, but I'm also almost always contemplating removing it (at least the on-access scanner). In all my years of doing PC stuff, including my younger days when I messed around quite a bit with shadier stuff, I've found exactly two viruses on my PC. I know that it's essentially impossible to be 100% certain that you don't have something, but I've seen absolutely nothing to indicate anything other than being perfectly clean.
The first virus came from putting my hard drive into a friend's PC to transfer some files. Someone else had used his PC and got CIH on it (to give you an idea how long ago that was), and it infected the files on my drive in his PC. The second time, I downloaded a suspicious file to examine it. Instead of right-clicking on it, I had a brain fart and double-clicked it. Based on that, I'm completely confident in saying that I've never gotten infected during normal usage of my PC.
If you use a NAT router, you're inherently blocking incoming connections. If you're doing nothing but playing games on the PCs, I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you use it for any web browsing at all, you're opening up a very large door for infections though. My general feeling is that most infections are user-caused, with drive-by attacks also becoming popular. Don't do stupid things, and you won't have bad things happen to you.
You can also tweak the AV settings to be less intrusive. At least for the game files, you can set it to scan them only on writes rather than reads. This should ensure that no new virus gets written there, without constantly having to scan game data files. One step further is completely excluding your games' files from scanning, though that gives viruses a place to safely hide if they do somehow get on your system.
Depends on exactly what you're doing. Running McAfee VirusScan Enterprise (as opposed to the home bloatware AV), it cut down the number of sessions we could support per Citrix server to less than half. While it shouldn't have a huge impact on a gaming system, you should keep in mind AV can still have a tremendous impact on performance in general.
I almost always run AV software, but I'm also almost always contemplating removing it (at least the on-access scanner). In all my years of doing PC stuff, including my younger days when I messed around quite a bit with shadier stuff, I've found exactly two viruses on my PC. I know that it's essentially impossible to be 100% certain that you don't have something, but I've seen absolutely nothing to indicate anything other than being perfectly clean.
The first virus came from putting my hard drive into a friend's PC to transfer some files. Someone else had used his PC and got CIH on it (to give you an idea how long ago that was), and it infected the files on my drive in his PC. The second time, I downloaded a suspicious file to examine it. Instead of right-clicking on it, I had a brain fart and double-clicked it. Based on that, I'm completely confident in saying that I've never gotten infected during normal usage of my PC.
If you use a NAT router, you're inherently blocking incoming connections. If you're doing nothing but playing games on the PCs, I wouldn't worry too much about it. If you use it for any web browsing at all, you're opening up a very large door for infections though. My general feeling is that most infections are user-caused, with drive-by attacks also becoming popular. Don't do stupid things, and you won't have bad things happen to you.
You can also tweak the AV settings to be less intrusive. At least for the game files, you can set it to scan them only on writes rather than reads. This should ensure that no new virus gets written there, without constantly having to scan game data files. One step further is completely excluding your games' files from scanning, though that gives viruses a place to safely hide if they do somehow get on your system.
Depends on exactly what you're doing. Running McAfee VirusScan Enterprise (as opposed to the home bloatware AV), it cut down the number of sessions we could support per Citrix server to less than half. While it shouldn't have a huge impact on a gaming system, you should keep in mind AV can still have a tremendous impact on performance in general.
Poorly chosen products certainly can impact performance. It is easier now than it ever has been to choose a product that both performs well and is lightweight. In fact it seems almost a weekly occurrence to discuss AV solutions here. The hysteria from some gamers that an AV product has a vast effect on their gaming performance is still in my opinion ridiculous. Unless they are running an archaic machine, archaic software or a combination of both, most current gaming machines will not bobble on a wisely chosen AV solution.
If you think your going to have problems with your "performance" PCs due to antivirus.......
Your really in for a treat if you don't run any antivirus.
Nod32 would be a great choice.
Be sure you don't have it set to update the antivirus definitions every hour. This can be set to be done at a certain time of day or every so often. If you do have it check for new definitions each hour then don't have it do a scan after downloading new definitions.
Schedule your scans to take place when gaming is not going on.
Be sure to use a software and or hardware firewall.
Your really in for a treat if you don't run any antivirus.
Nod32 would be a great choice.
Be sure you don't have it set to update the antivirus definitions every hour. This can be set to be done at a certain time of day or every so often. If you do have it check for new definitions each hour then don't have it do a scan after downloading new definitions.
Schedule your scans to take place when gaming is not going on.
Be sure to use a software and or hardware firewall.
Yes. Years ago in the UT community I recall some infected servers that were serving up malware(mutators, etc..) and it was being downloaded into the UT cache. I'm talking more than five years ago but I remembered reading about it on the UT forums back in the day, it wasn't widespread. Also if you're using any type of no-cd/dvd or other game crack, not saying you are, you always take the chance of introducing some nasty gremlins into your system.
I don't game as much or even at all right now but I leave my AV(Avast) on when I do game and I can't tell the difference at all. If you have a fairly recent rig with a decent amount of ram I really wouldn't sweat it.
YeOldeStonecat
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True on all 3x accounts....I remember those poisoned UT servers. The map downloads for custom maps were a potential source of issue. And I've seen poisoned no-cd-cracks.
No-CD cracks are very convenient, I also purchase all of my games and I consider certain versions of Securom to be malware so you're stuck with the choice to install Securom or take a chance on a no-cd crack. Not all no-cd cracks are viruses but you always take the chance. The best bet is to upload them to virustotal.com and see what it says. What makes it dicey is I think many of them are flagged as a trojan even if they're not so it's hard to get a true analysis.
Disabling downloads may help to prevent infected mutators and such but I would just run a AV in the background to be honest. Then you have to think about if the AV is capable of scanning the compressed formats of the map packs, mutators, etc. I think most games decompresses them on the fly when needed, maybe a AV would catch it at this point, don't know. In all the years i've been playing UT(since 2000) and other online FPS I never had a infected download that I know off. I would disable my AV back in the day when I had a slower rig to play many games and I never had an issue.
Disabling downloads may help to prevent infected mutators and such but I would just run a AV in the background to be honest. Then you have to think about if the AV is capable of scanning the compressed formats of the map packs, mutators, etc. I think most games decompresses them on the fly when needed, maybe a AV would catch it at this point, don't know. In all the years i've been playing UT(since 2000) and other online FPS I never had a infected download that I know off. I would disable my AV back in the day when I had a slower rig to play many games and I never had an issue.