Document: Webroot SecureAnywhere Business Endpoint Protection vs. Seven Competitors (August 2015)
Authors:
M. Baquiran, D. Wren
Company: PassMark Software
Date:
4 August 2015
File:
Webroot_SecureAnywhere_Business_vs_competitors_2015_Edition_1.docx
Edition1

Webroot SecureAnywhere Endpoint Protection vs. Seven Endpoint Security Products

PassMark Software

TABLE OF CONTENTS......................................................................................................................................... 2
REVISION HISTORY............................................................................................................................................ 3
REFERENCES...................................................................................................................................................... 3
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................................... 4
OVERALL SCORE ................................................................................................................................................ 5
PRODUCTS AND VERSIONS ............................................................................................................................... 6PERFORMANCE METRICS SUMMARY ................................................................................................................ 7
TEST RESULTS ................................................................................................................................................. 10
BENCHMARK 1 – INSTALLATION TIME ........................................................................................................................ 10
BENCHMARK 2 – INSTALLATION SIZE ......................................................................................................................... 10
BENCHMARK 3 – BOOT TIME ................................................................................................................................... 11
BENCHMARK 4 – CPU USAGE DURING IDLE ................................................................................................................ 11
BENCHMARK 5 – CPU USAGE DURING SCAN .............................................................................................................. 12
BENCHMARK 6 – MEMORY USAGE DURING SYSTEM IDLE .............................................................................................. 12
BENCHMARK 7 – MEMORY USAGE DURING INITIAL SCAN .............................................................................................. 13
BENCHMARK 8 – SCHEDULED SCAN TIME ................................................................................................................... 13
BENCHMARK 9 – BROWSE TIME ............................................................................................................................... 14
BENCHMARK 10 – FILE COPY, MOVE, AND DELETE ...................................................................................................... 14
BENCHMARK 11 – FILE COMPRESSION AND DECOMPRESSION ........................................................................................ 15
BENCHMARK 12 – FILE WRITE, OPEN, AND CLOSE ....................................................................................................... 15
BENCHMARK 13 – NETWORK THROUGHPUT ............................................................................................................... 16
DISCLAIMER AND DISCLOSURE ....................................................................................................................... 17
CONTACT DETAILS .......................................................................................................................................... 17
APPENDIX 1 – TEST ENVIRONMENT ................................................................................................................ 18
APPENDIX 2 – METHODOLOGY DESCRIPTION ................................................................................................. 19

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

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Rev
Edition 1

Revision History

1

Date

Initial version of this report.

Ref #Document

What Really Slows Windows Down (URL)

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

PassMark Software

4 August 2015

AuthorO. Warner,
The PC Spy

Date

2001-2015

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PassMark Software® conducted objective performance testing on eight (8) security software products, on
Windows 8.1 (64-bit) during July and August 2015. This report presents our results and findings as a result of
performance benchmark testing conducted for these endpoint security products.
The aim of this benchmark was to compare the performance impact of Webroot’s SecureAnywhere BusinessEndpoint Protection product with seven (7) competitor products.
Testing was performed on all products using thirteen (13) performance metrics. These performance metrics are
as follows.
 Installation Time; Installation Size; Boot Time; CPU Usage during Idle;
 CPU Usage during Scan; Memory Usage during System Idle;
 Memory Usage during Initial Scan;
 Scheduled Scan Time; Browse Time; File Copy, Move, and Delete; File Compression and Decompression;
 File Write, Open, and Close; and Network Throughput.

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

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PassMark Software assigned every product a score depending on its ranking in each metric compared to otherproducts in the same category. In the following table the highest possible score attainable has been normalized to100. This would be the score given if a product attained first place in all thirteen (13) metrics. Endpoint products
have been ranked by their overall scores:
Product Name

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

Overall Score

Webroot SecureAnywhere Business Endpoint Protection

97

ESET Endpoint Security

58

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

57

Symantec .cloud

56

Trend Micro Worry Free Business Security Standard

50

Microsoft Security Center Endpoint Protection

47

Sophos Cloud

43

McAfee Complete Endpoint Protection – Business

40

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For each security product, we have tested the most current and publicly available version. The names and versionsof products are given below:

Product Version

Date
TestedWebroot SecureAnywhere Business Endpoint
Protection

8.0.8.88

Jul 2015

Trend Micro Worry Free Business Security
Standard

19.0.2166

Jul 2015

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

10.2.1.23

Jul 2015

Sophos Cloud

Endpoint
Security andControl 11.1.1

Jul 2015

McAfee Complete Endpoint Protection - Business

VirusScan,
AntiSpyware
Enterprise 8.8

Jul 2015

Manufacturer

Product Name

Webroot Inc.
Trend Micro Inc.
Kaspersky Lab
Sophos

McAfee, Inc.

Symantec Corp

ESET, spol. s r.o.
Microsoft Corporation

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

Symantec Endpoint Protection Small Business
Edition 2013 (Symantec .cloud)

Cloud Agent2.03.62.2882

Jul 2015

NIS-21.5.0.19

ESET Endpoint Security

6.2.2021.0

Aug 2015

Microsoft System Center Endpoint Protection

4.7.2.13.0

Jul 2015

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We have selected a set of objective metrics which provide a comprehensive and realistic indication of the areas inwhich endpoint protection products may impact system performance for end users. Our metrics test the impactof the software on common tasks that end-users would perform on a daily basis.
All of PassMark Software’s test methods can be replicated by third parties using the same environment to obtain
similar benchmark results. Detailed descriptions of the methodologies used in our tests are available as “Appendix
2 – Methodology Description” of this report.

The speed and ease of the installation process will strongly influence the user’s first impression of the security
software. This test measures the installation time required by the security software to be fully functional and readyfor use by the end user. Lower installation times represent security products which are quicker for a user to install.

In offering new features and functionality to users, security software products tend to increase in size with eachnew release. Although new technologies push the size limits of hard drives each year, the growing disk spacerequirements of common applications and the increasing popularity of large media files (such as movies, photos
and music) ensure that a product's installation size will remain of interest to home users.
This metric aims to measure a product’s total installation size. This metric is defined as the total disk spaceconsumed by all new files added during a product's installation.

This metric measures the amount of time taken for the machine to boot into the operating system. Security
software is generally launched at Windows startup, adding an additional amount of time and delaying the startupof the operating system. Shorter boot times indicate that the application has had less impact on the normal
operation of the machine.

The amount of memory used while the machine is idle provides a good indication of the amount of system
resources being consumed by the security software on a permanent basis. This metric measures the amount ofmemory (RAM) used by the product while the machine and security software are in an idle state. The total memory
usage was calculated by identifying all the security software’s processes and the amount of memory used by eachprocess.

The amount of load on the CPU while security software conducts a malware scan may prevent the reasonable useof the endpoint machine until the scan has completed. This metric measured the percentage of CPU used by
security software when performing a scan.

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

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PassMark SoftwareThis metric measures the amount of memory (RAM) used by the product while the machine and security softwareare in an idle state. The total memory usage was calculated by identifying all security software processes and theamount of memory used by each process.
The amount of memory used while the machine is idle provides a good indication of the amount of system
resources being consumed by the security software on a permanent basis. Better performing products occupy lessmemory while the machine is idle.

This metric measures the amount of memory (RAM) used by the product during an initial security scan. The total
memory usage was calculated by identifying all security software processes and the amount of memory used byeach process during the scan.

Most antivirus solutions are scheduled by default to scan the system regularly for viruses and malware. This metricmeasured the amount of time required to run a scheduled scan on the system. The scan is set to run at a specified
time via the client user interface.

It is common behavior for security products to scan data for malware as it is downloaded from the internet or
intranet. This behavior may negatively impact browsing speed as products scan web content for malware. This
metric measures the time taken to browse a set of popular internet sites to consecutively load from a local server
in a user’s browser window.

This metric measures the amount of time taken to copy, move and delete a sample set of files. The sample file set
contains several types of file formats that a Windows user would encounter in daily use. These formats include
documents (e.g. Microsoft Office documents, Adobe PDF, Zip files, etc), media formats (e.g. images, movies andmusic) and system files (e.g. executables, libraries, etc).

This metric measures the amount of time taken to compress and decompress different types of files. Files formats
used in this test included documents, movies and images.

This benchmark was derived from Oli Warner’s File I/O test at http://www.thepcspy.com (please see Reference#1: What Really Slows Windows Down). This metric measures the amount of time taken to write a file, then open
and close that file.

The metric measures the amount of time taken to download a variety of files from a local server using theHyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP), which is the main protocol used on the web for browsing, linking and data
Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

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PassMark Softwaretransfer. Files used in this test include file formats that users would typically download from the web, such asimages, archives, music files and movie files.

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

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In the following charts, we have highlighted the results we obtained for Webroot SecureAnywhere BusinessEndpoint Protection in green. The competitor average has also been highlighted in blue for ease of comparison.

The following chart compares the minimum installation time it takes for endpoint security products to be fully
functional and ready for use by the end user. Products with lower installation times are considered better
performing products in this category.
Webroot SecureAnywhere Business EP

5

Trend Micro WFBS

183

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

270

ESET Endpoint Security

312

Microsoft System Center EP

389

Average

419

Sophos Cloud

434

Symantec .cloud

792

McAfee CEP Business

965

0s

200 s

400 s

600 s

800 s

1,000 s1,200 s

The following chart compares the total size of files added during the installation of endpoint security products.
Products with lower installation sizes are considered better performing products in this category.
Webroot SecureAnywhere Business EP
Microsoft System Center EP

2
237

Trend Micro WFBS

599

ESET Endpoint Security

1122

Average

1148

Symantec .cloud

1212

McAfee CEP Business

1475

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

1563

Sophos Cloud
0 MB

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

2973

500 MB

1,000 MB1,500 MB2,000 MB2,500 MB3,000 MB3,500 MB

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The following chart compares the average time taken for the system to boot (from a sample of five boots) for each
endpoint security product tested. Products with lower boot times are considered better performing products inthis category.*
Webroot SecureAnywhere Business EP

23.3

Sophos Cloud

26.0

ESET Endpoint Security

26.2

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

29.3

Average30.7

Microsoft System Center EP

36.4

McAfee CEP Business

36.4

Symantec .cloud

37.3

0s

5s

10 s

15 s

20 s

25 s

30 s

35 s

40 s

*Trend Micro WFBS was omitted from this test as the boot time test could not be run successfully with the product installed.

The following chart compares the average CPU usage during system idle. Products with lower CPU usage areconsidered better performing products in this category.
Webroot SecureAnywhere Business EP

0.13%

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

0.16%

ESET Endpoint Security

0.20%

Symantec .cloud

0.21%

Sophos Cloud

0.26%

McAfee CEP Business
Average

0.57%

0.83%

Microsoft System Center EP

0.98%

Trend Micro WFBS
0.0%

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

4.14%

0.5%

1.0%

1.5%

2.0%

2.5%

3.0%

3.5%

4.0%

4.5%

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The following chart compares the average CPU usage during a scan of a set of media files, system files andMicrosoft Office documents that totaled 5.42 GB. Products with lower CPU usage are considered better
performing products in this category.
Sophos Cloud

8%

Webroot SecureAnywhere Business EP

10%

ESET Endpoint Security

14%

McAfee CEP Business

19%

Average24%

Trend Micro WFBS

25%

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

34%

Microsoft System Center EP

39%

Symantec .cloud

41%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

The following chart compares the average amount of RAM in use by an endpoint security product during a periodof system idle. This average is taken from a sample of ten memory snapshots taken at roughly 60 seconds apartafter reboot. Products with lower idle RAM usage are considered better performing products in this category.

Webroot SecureAnywhere Business EP

5.5

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

39.1

Trend Micro WFBS

60.6

Microsoft System Center EP

88.3

Symantec .cloud

95.2

Average

137.0

ESET Endpoint Security

152.1

McAfee CEP Business

157.1

Sophos Cloud
0 MB

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

497.8

100 MB

200 MB

300 MB

400 MB500 MB

600 MB

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The following chart compares the average amount of RAM in use by an endpoint security product during an initialscan on the main drive. This average is taken from a sample of ten memory snapshots taken at five second intervals
during a scan of sample files which have not been previously scanned by the software. Products that use lessmemory during a scan are considered better performing products in this category. (136

Webroot SecureAnywhere Business EP

13

Trend Micro WFBS

107

ESET Endpoint Security

159

Microsoft System Center EP

168

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

188

Average

210

McAfee CEP Business

249

Symantec .cloud

288

Sophos Cloud

507

0 MB

100 MB

200 MB

300 MB

400 MB500 MB

600 MBThe following chart compares the average time taken to run a scheduled scan on the system for each security
product tested.

Webroot SecureAnywhere Business EP

91

Symantec .cloud

118

Trend Micro WFBS

329

Microsoft System Center EP

636

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

1318

Sophos Cloud

1395

ESET Endpoint Security

1705

Average

1780

McAfee CEP Business

8647

0s

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

1,000 s2,000 s3,000 s4,000 s5,000 s6,000 s7,000 s8,000 s9,000 s 10,000 s

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The following chart compares the average time taken for Internet Explorer to successively load a set of popular
websites through the local area network from a local server machine. Products with lower browse times are
considered better performing products in this category.*
Symantec .cloud

34.2

Trend Micro WFBS

35.8

Webroot SecureAnywhere Business EP

37.9

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

40.7

Average

51.8

ESET Endpoint Security

56.4

Sophos Cloud

67.8

Microsoft System Center EP

70.9

McAfee CEP Business

70.9

0s

10 s

20 s

30 s

40 s

50 s

60 s

70 s

80 s

*For the test script to run on Webroot SecureAnywhere, the default settings needed to be changed. This involved changing Internet explorer
to “Allow” under the Application Protection settings window.

The following chart compares the average time taken to copy, move and delete several sets of sample files foreach endpoint security product tested. Products with lower times are considered better performing products inthis category.
Webroot SecureAnywhere Business EP

8.3

Symantec .cloud

9.6

ESET Endpoint Security

10.2

Microsoft System Center EP

13.7

Average

14.7

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

15.1

McAfee CEP Business

15.1

Sophos Cloud

20.9

Trend Micro WFBS

25.0

0s

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

5s

10 s

15 s

20 s

25 s

30 s

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The following chart compares the average time it takes for sample files to be compressed and decompressed foreach endpoint security product tested. Products with lower times are considered better performing products inthis category.

Webroot SecureAnywhere Business EP

46.6

Symantec .cloud

47.4

ESET Endpoint Security

47.7

McAfee CEP Business

47.8

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

48.4

Average

49.4

Sophos Cloud

49.8

Microsoft System Center EP

51.0

Trend Micro WFBS

56.3

0s

10 s

20 s

30 s

40 s

50 s

60 s

The following chart compares the average time it takes for a file to be written to the hard drive then opened andclosed 180,000 times, for each endpoint security product tested. Products with lower times are considered better
performing products in this category.

Webroot SecureAnywhere Business EP

19.2

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

24.7

Symantec .cloud

26.9

McAfee CEP Business

35.3

Sophos Cloud

49.1

ESET Endpoint Security

73.0

Average

124.5

Microsoft System Center EP

307.4

Trend Micro WFBS

460.0

0s

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

50 s

100 s

150 s

200 s

250 s

300 s

350 s

400 s

450 s

500 s

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The following chart compares the average time to download a sample set of common file types for each endpoint
security product tested. Products with lower times are considered better performing products in this category.

Webroot SecureAnywhere Business EP

6.1

McAfee CEP Business

6.4

Microsoft System Center EP

6.5

Sophos Cloud

7.8

Trend Micro WFBS

8.2

Average

8.7

Symantec .cloud

9.4

ESET Endpoint Security

11.0

Kaspersky Endpoint Security

14.4

0s

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

2s

4s

6s

8s

10 s

12 s

14 s

16 s

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PassMark SoftwareThis report only covers versions of products that were available at the time of testing. The tested versions are as
noted in the “Products and Versions” section of this report. The products we have tested are not an exhaustive
list of all products available in these very competitive product categories.

While every effort has been made to ensure that the information presented in this report is accurate, PassMark
Software Pty Ltd assumes no responsibility for errors, omissions, or out-of-date information and shall not be liable
in any manner whatsoever for direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages resulting from theavailability of, use of, access of, or inability to use this information.

Webroot Inc. funded the production of this report. The list of products tested and the metrics included in thereport were selected by Webroot.

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

PassMark Software Pty Ltd
Level 563 Foveaux St.
Surry Hills, 2010
Sydney, Australia
Phone + 61 (2) 9690 0444
Fax

+ 61 (2) 9690 0445

Web

www.passmark.com

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

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For our testing, PassMark Software used a test environment running Windows 8.1 (64-bit) with the following
hardware specifications:
Model:
CPU:
Video Card:
Motherboard:
RAM:
HDD:
Network:

HP Pavilion P6-2300A
Intel Core i5 3330 @ 2.66GHz
1GB nVIDIA GeForce GT 620M
Foxconn 2ABF 3.10
6GB DDR3 RAM
Hitachi HDS721010CLA630 931.51GB
Gigabit (1GB/s)

The Web and File server was not benchmarked directly, but served the web pages and files to the endpoint
machine during performance testing.
CPU:
Video Card:
Motherboard:
RAM:
SSD:
Network:

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

Intel Xeon E3-1220v2 CPU
Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB ECC RAM)Intel S1200BTL Server
Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) ECC RAM, 1333Mhz
OCZ 128GB 2.5” Solid State Disk
Gigabit (1GB/s)

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As with testing on Windows Vista, Norton Ghost was used to create a “clean” baseline image prior to testing. Our
aim is to create a baseline image with the smallest possible footprint and reduce the possibility of variation causedby external operating system factors.
The baseline image was restored prior to testing of each different product. This process ensures that we install
and test all products on the same, “clean” machine.
The steps taken to create the base Windows 8.1 image are as follows:1.

Installation and activation of Windows 8.1.

2.

Disabled Automatic Updates.

3.

Changed User Account Control settings to “Never Notify”.

4.

Disable Windows Defender automatic scans to avoid unexpected background activity.

5.

Disable the Windows firewall to avoid interference with security software.

6.

Disabled Superfetch to ensure consistent results.

7.

Installed HTTP Watch for Browse Time testing.

8.

Installed Windows Performance Toolkit x64 for Boot Time testing.

9.

Installed Active Perl for interpretation of some test scripts.

10.

Install OSForensics for testing (Installation Size and Registry Key Count tests) purposes.

11.

Disabled updates, accelerators and compatibility view updates in Internet Explorer 11.

12.

Install important Windows updates.

13.

Created a baseline image using Norton Ghost.

This test measures the minimum Installation Time a product requires to be fully functional and ready for use by
the end user. Installation time can usually be divided in three major phases: The Extraction and Setup phase consists of file extraction, the EULA prompt, product activation and user
configurable options for installation.
 The File Copy phase occurs when the product is being installed; usually this phase is indicated by a progressbar.
 The Post-Installation phase is any part of the installation that occurs after the File Copy phase. This phasevaries widely between products; the time recorded in this phase may include a required reboot to finalize theinstallation or include the time the program takes to become idle in the system tray.
To reduce the impact of disk drive variables, each product was copied to the Desktop before initializing installation.
Each step of the installation process was manually timed with a stopwatch and recorded in as much detail as
possible. Where input was required by the end user, the stopwatch was paused and the input noted in the raw
results in parenthesis after the phase description.

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

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Where possible, all requests by products to pre-scan or post-install scan were declined or skipped. Where it was
not possible to skip a scan, the time to scan was included as part of the installation time. Where an optional
component of the installation formed a reasonable part of the functionality of the software, it was also installed(e.g. website link checking software as part of a Security Product).
Installation time includes the time taken by the product installer to download components required in the
installation. This may include mandatory updates or the delivery of the application itself from a download
manager. We have noted in our results where a product has downloaded components for product installation.
We have excluded product activation times due to network variability in contacting vendor servers or time takenin account creation. For all products tested, the installation was performed directly on the endpoint, either using
a standalone installation package or via the management server web console.

A product's Installation Size was previously defined as the difference between the initial snapshot of the Disk Space(C: drive) before installation and the subsequent snapshot taken after the product is installed on the system.
Although this is a widely used methodology, we noticed that the results it yielded were not always reproducible
in Vista due to random OS operations that may take place between the two snapshots. We improved theInstallation Size methodology by removing as many Operating System and disk space variables as possible.
Using PassMark’s OSForensics 2.2 we created initial and post-installation disk signatures for each product. These
disk signatures recorded the amount of files and directories, and complete details of all files on that drive (including
file name, file size, checksum, etc) at the time the signature was taken.
The initial disk signature was taken immediately prior to installation of the product. A subsequent disk signature
was taken immediately following a system reboot after product installation. Using OSForensics, we compared thetwo signatures and calculated the total disk space consumed by files that were new, modified, and deleted during
product installation. Our result for this metric reflects the total size of all newly added files during installation.
The scope of this metric includes only an ‘out of the box’ installation size for each product. Our result does notcover the size of files downloaded by the product after its installation (such as engine or signature updates), or
any files created by system restore points, pre-fetch files and other temporary files.

PassMark Software uses tools available from the Windows Performance Toolkit version 4.6 (as part of theMicrosoft Windows 7 SDK obtainable from the Microsoft Website) with a view to obtaining more precise andconsistent boot time results on the Windows 7 platform.
The boot process is first optimized with xbootmgr.exe using the command “xbootmgr.exe -trace boot –prepSystem” which prepares the system for the test over six optimization boots. The boot traces obtained fromthe optimization process are discarded.
After boot optimization, the benchmark is conducted using the command "xbootmgr.exe -trace boot -numruns 5”.
This command boots the system five times in succession, taking detailed boot traces for each boot cycle.

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

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Finally, a post-processing tool was used to parse the boot traces and obtain the BootTimeViaPostBoot value. Thisvalue reflects the amount of time it takes the system to complete all (and only) boot time processes. Our final
result is an average of five boot traces.

CPUAvg is a command-line tool which samples the amount of CPU load two times per second. From this, CPUAvg
calculates and displays the average CPU load for the interval of time for which it has been active.
For this metric, CPUAvg was used to measure the CPU load on average (as a percentage) during a period of system
idle for 500 samples. This test is conducted after restarting the endpoint machine and after five minutes ofmachine idle.

CPUAvg is a command-line tool which samples the amount of CPU load approximately two times per second. From
this, CPUAvg calculates and displays the average CPU load for the interval of time for which it has been active.
For this metric, CPUAvg was used to measure the CPU load on average (as a percentage) by the system while theOn-Demand Scan Time test was being conducted. The final result was calculated as an average five sets of thirty
CPU load samples.

The MemLog++ utility was used to record process memory usage on the system at boot, and then every minutefor another fifteen minutes after. This was done only once per product and resulted in a total of 15 samples. The
first sample taken at boot is discarded.
The MemLog++ utility records memory usage of all processes, not just those of the anti-malware product. As aresult of this, an anti-malware product’s processes needed to be isolated from all other running system processes.
To isolate relevant process, we used a program called Process Explorer which was run immediately upon thecompletion of memory usage logging by MemLog++. Process Explorer is a Microsoft Windows Sysinternals
software tool which shows a list of all DLL processes currently loaded on the system.

The MemLog++ utility was used to record memory usage on the system while a malware scan is in progress. Pleaserefer to the metric “Memory usage – System Idle” above for a description of the MemLog++utility and an
explanation of the method by which memory usage is calculated.
As some products cache scan locations, we take reasonable precautions to ensure that the security software does
not scan the C:\ drive at any point before conducting this test. A manual scan on the C:\ drive is initiated at thesame time as the MemLog++ utility, enabling MemLog++ to record memory usage for 120 seconds at 12 second
intervals.

This scan is configured as a full system scheduled scan from user interface. The default scheduled scan settings are
kept (except for the start time) and the scan is scheduled to run at the next convenient time. To record the scan

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Windows 8.1

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time, we have used product’s built-in scan timer or reporting system. Where this was not possible, scan times
were taken manually with a stopwatch.
The scan is run three times with a reboot between each run to remove potential caching effects. In the past, many
products have shown a substantial difference between the initial scan time (first scan) and subsequent scan times(scans 2 to 5). We believe this behavior is due to products themselves caching recently scanned files. As a resultof this mechanism, we have averaged the four subsequent scan times to obtain an average subsequent scan time.
Our final result for this test is an average of the subsequent scan average and the initial scan time. Where thisoption is not available, the product is omitted from the metric, and given the lowest score for this metric.

We used a script in conjunction with HTTPWatch (Basic Edition, version 9.1.13.0) to record the amount of time ittakes for a set of 106 ‘popular’ websites to load consecutively from a local server. This script feeds a list of URLs
into HTTPWatch, which instructs the browser to load pages in sequence and monitors the amount of time it takes
for the browser to load all items on one page.
For this test, we have used Internet Explorer 11 (11.0.9600.17801) as our browser.
The set of websites used in this test include front pages of high traffic pages. This includes shopping, social, news,
finance and reference websites.
The Browse Time test is executed five times and our final result is an average of these five samples. The local serveris restarted between different products and one initial ‘test’ run is conducted prior to testing to install Adobe Flash
Player, an add-on which is used by many popular websites.

We used a single script in testing Benchmarks 10-13. The script consecutively executes tests for Benchmarks 1013. The script times each phase in these benchmarks using CommandTimer.exe and appends results to a log file.

This test measures the amount of time required for the system to copy, move and delete samples of files in various
file formats. This sample was made up of 812 files over 760,867,636 bytes and can be categorized as documents[26% of total], media files [54% of total] and PE files (i.e. System Files) [20% of total].
The breakdown of the main file types, file numbers and total sizes of the files in the sample set is shown in thefollowing table:

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

File format

NumberSize (bytes)

DOC

830,450,176

DOCX

4

13,522,409

PPT

3

5,769,216

PPTX

3

4,146,421

XLS

4

2,660,352

XLSX

4

1,426,054

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Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

PDF

73

136,298,049

ZIP

4

6,295,987

7Z

1

92,238JPG

351

31,375,259

GIF

6148,182MOV

7

57,360,371

RM

1

5,658,646

AVI

8

78,703,408

WMV

5

46,126,167

MP3

28

191,580,387

EXE

19

2,952,914

DLL

104

29,261,568

AX

118,432CPL

22,109,440

CPX

2

4,384

DRV

10

154,864

ICO

1

107,620MSC

141,587

NT

1

1,688

ROM

2

36,611SCR

22,250,240

SYS

1

37,528,093

TLB

3

135,580

TSK

1

1,152

UCE

1

22,984EXE

192,952,914

DLL

104

29,261,568

AX

118,432CPL

22,109,440

CPX

2

4,384

DRV

10

154,864

ICO

1

107,620MSC

141,587

NT

1

1,688

ROM

2

36,611SCR

22,250,240

SYS

1

37,528,093

TLB

3

135,580

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TSK

1

1,152

UCE

1

22,984

Total

812

760,867,636

PassMark SoftwareThis test was conducted five times to obtain the average time to copy, move and delete the sample files, with thetest machine rebooted between each sample to remove potential caching effects.

This test measured the amount of time required to compress and decompress a sample set of files. For this test,
we used a subset of the media and documents files used in the File Copy, Move, and Delete benchmark.
CommandTimer.exe recorded the amount of time required for 7zip.exe to compress the files into a *.zip andsubsequently decompress the created *.zip file.
This subset comprised 1,218 files over 783 MB. The breakdown of the file types, file numbers and total sizes of thefiles in the sample set is shown in the following table:
File Type

File Number

Total Size

.xls

13

9.23 MB.xlsx

93.51 MB.ppt

97.37 MB.pptx

1117.4 MB.doc

17

35.9 MB.docx

1924.5 MB.gif

177

1.10 MB.jpg

737

66.2 MB.png

15948.9 MB.mov7

54.7 MB.rm

1

5.39 MB.avi

46

459 MB.wma

1148.6 MB.avi

46

459 MB.wma

1148.6 MB

Total

1218

783 MB

This test was conducted five times to obtain the average file compression and decompression speed, with the test
machine rebooted between each sample to remove potential caching effects.

This benchmark was derived from Oli Warner’s File I/O test at http://www.thepcspy.com (please see Reference#1: What Really Slows Windows Down).

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For this test, we developed OpenClose.exe, an application that looped writing a small file to disk, then opening
and closing that file. CommandTimer.exe was used to time how long the process took to complete 180,000 cycles.
This test was conducted five times to obtain the average file writing, opening and closing speed, with the test
machine rebooted between each sample to remove potential caching effects.

This benchmark measured how much time was required to download a sample set of binary files of various sizes
and types over a 100MB/s network connection. The files were hosted on a server machine running Windows Server
2012 and IIS 7. CommandTimer.exe was used in conjunction with GNU Wget (version 1.10.1) to time and conduct
the download test.
The complete sample set of files was made up of 553,638,694 bytes over 484 files and two file type categories:
media files [74% of total] and documents [26% of total]. The breakdown of the file types, file numbers and total
sizes of the files in the sample set is shown in the following table:
File format

NumberSize (bytes)

JPEG

343

30,668,312

GIF

9360,349PNG

5494,780MOV

757,360,371

RM

1

5,658,646

AVI

8

78,703,408

WMV

5

46,126,167

MP3

28

191,580,387

PDF

73

136,298,049

ZIP

4

6,295,987

7Z

1

92,238

Total

484

553,638,694

This test was conducted five times to obtain the average time to download this sample of files, with the test
machine rebooted between each sample to remove potential caching effects.

Performance Benchmark
Windows 8.1

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