Do I need an anti virus for gaming pc?

Batigol79

Batigol79

Batigol79

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I only use pc for gaming and the only thing I ever download is patches and updates, I never use e mail and only surf games related well known sites. And only ever listen to music on you tube so do I realy need an anti virus?
 
For any browsing use antivirus, even reputable sites can be hijacked.

I only download steam, impulse and windows updates on my gaming machine; the rest of the time it's not connected to the internet. It's been fine without antivirus for a couple of years, but I only risk it because there are literally no documents on there, and windows is in a seperate partition so easily wiped and reinstalled if necessary.

If you keep anything of value on that machine, or spend more than a few minutes a week online, use antivirus software. You can always disconnect and kill it with smartclose when you want maximum performance.
 
I have no anti-virus installed and have never needed one (well, not since I was 12), and this is even with the tons of cracks etc. I go through for gaming.

As long as you download from a trustable source and not some random torrents found using google, you'll be safe mostly. Out of interest I ran several AVs around 3 years after I last reinstalled XP on my older PC, nothing detected except the usual internet explorer cookies (which I don't use either way).

If you feel you don't need an A/V then don't use one, if you feel you need one then get one simple as that.
 
Strawberry said:
I have no anti-virus installed and have never needed one (well, not since I was 12), and this is even with the tons of cracks etc. I go through for gaming.

As long as you download from a trustable source and not some random torrents found using google, you'll be safe mostly. Out of interest I ran several AVs around 3 years after I last reinstalled XP on my older PC, nothing detected except the usual internet explorer cookies (which I don't use either way).

If you feel you don't need an A/V then don't use one, if you feel you need one then get one simple as that.
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this is just like saying i leave the backdoor to my house unlocked and i have never been burgled

not discounting what you are saying, but considering they are free its better to have one than not to.
 
Paul11 said:
this is just like saying i leave the backdoor to my house unlocked and i have never been burgled
Click to expand...

Not quite, because a virus can't install itself with 0 user interaction (nowadays OS exploits are uncommon enough to rule out that possibility, and even if so, I have a heavily defended FreeBSD box running as my router that filters all incoming connections either way).

A burglar can, however, enter your house even if you aren't home.

I tried several AVs before, but they've generally slowed down my machine / caused all sorts of access problems / had unwanted Ads or generally made me feel uncomfortable.

The last one even messed up my onboard sound card so hard I had to reset my CMOS to prevent sound from locking up, no matter what OS or application.
 
Strawberry said:
Out of interest I ran several AVs around 3 years after I last reinstalled XP on my older PC, nothing detected except the usual internet explorer cookies (which I don't use either way).
Click to expand...

Other than that, I can log all packets going through my router or HDD activity, and have suffered none of that nor any abnormal behavior or slowdowns after time.

If the virus, if any, has no visible or hidden impact, doesn't try to make any connections, sends no packets, is unable to open a port, doesn't do anything on the HDD and doesn't slow down my system, then I wouldn't care about its existence either way.
 
To be honest the only things my AV has flagged in the last three years are programs I want it to ignore -_-

I've found a lot more annoyances by using Zonealarm

"[randomletters].exe is trying to access the Internet"

OHRLY?

Funny that, I don't recall installing any programs recently and whaddya know, [randomletters].exe lives in a [morerandomletters] folder in a very suspicious location, also has registry entries to run on startup.

My antivirus isn't suspicious enough to see crap like that but Zonealarm gives me the headsup on things which want internet access.

I've heard that outbound protection is pointless because anything already on the inside can compromise the firewall but it's worked well for me so far. Anything that is vicious enough to cripple the firewall I'm hoping I'm not dumb enough to let in or that the AV gets round to doing some work and catches it.
 
Grab ESET NOD 32/Smart Security, it's cheap, unobtrusive and lightweight, but at the same time very powerful and regularly updated (at least once a day).

I use it on all 4 of my machines, and I know many other people who would highly recommend it
 
Hotwired said:
I've heard that outbound protection is pointless because anything already on the inside can compromise the firewall but it's worked well for me so far. Anything that is vicious enough to cripple the firewall I'm hoping I'm not dumb enough to let in or that the AV gets round to doing some work and catches it.
Click to expand...

And that's why you don't use Windows Firewall, for anything.
Use an external firewall in no way directly connected to your PC via USB or anything else that allows the PC to modify it.
 
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