Windows Defender reduces the performance of your Intel processor, solution! – GinjFo

According to work by Kevin Glynn, the developer of the ThrottleStop and RealTemp Windows Defender utilities is the victim of a bug. Windows native antivirus consumes more system resources than it should. The good news is that an app can rectify the situation.

Antivirus comes with real-time monitoring. It detects any unusual activity. The goal is to prevent malware from acting. Windows Defender is no exception to this rule. Unfortunately in this situation the Microsoft application is resource intensive.

A screenshot shared by our colleague Techpowerup shows a 4% CPU occupation during the execution of the CineBench benchmark. As a result, this gluttony results in a drop in PC performance.

Impact of Windows Defender when running the Cinebench benchmark

Computer processors have special registers called hardware performance counters. Techpowerup states that Windows Defender uses all possible hardware performance counters, including fixed function counters found in Intel processors.

These counters can operate in 4 possible modes:

• Disabled
• OS (ring-0)
• User (ring >0)
• All-Ring levels

Windows Defender sets these counters to mode 2 at random intervals for an indefinite amount of time. This can happen at any time, on startup or during normal use. The problem is that it requires CPU resources. The latter cannot therefore give the best of itself if an application requiring significant calculations is launched. Interestingly, AMD processors are not affected by this issue.

Note that the value of these performance counters is set to mode 3 or All-Ring levels, when monitoring tools such as ThrottleStop or HWinfo are launched. When Windows Defender detects a change in the counters, it does not reset them, which ensures that the PC operates at maximum efficiency.

Now, it is not possible to launch such tools all the time to fix this Windows Defender issue. So what to do?

Windows and the Counter Control utility

The solution is quite simple since an application dealing with this problem is now available. Developed by Kevin Glynn, it is called “ Counter Control “. Its function is to correct the impact of Windows Defender on PC performance. In use it is possible to know if Defender has an impact while proposing a way to switch the counters to mode 3. Moreover, this modification does not affect the antivirus capacities of Windows Defender. Protection is therefore not compromised.

Is my Intel PC victim of this Defender bug?

To know the answer to this question, just download “Counter Control” and then run it. No installation is required it is a portable software. The utility supports most Intel processors released since 2008.

If you see code 0x222 in the application GUI, it means that Windows Defender is using CPU cycles unnecessarily. Just click on the “Reset Counters” button. The code should normally change to 0x330, which indicates that everything is normal.

The bad news is that “Counter Control” must run every time the PC starts in order to reset the counters. Another solution is to use ThrottleStop 9.5. The latest update introduces a new feature called Windows Defender Boost. You must activate it and run the application when you start the computer.