According to AV-Comparatives, its researchers conducted a comparative test on 16 popular anti-virus applications during December, measuring the impact of anti-virus software on system performance.

The Austrian firm says that the tests sought to demonstrate to what extent various anti-virus programmes slow down the performance of common user tasks.

Tests included seven typical operations performed by users such as copying, archiving and decoding files, downloading files from the internet, and installing, as well as launching selected programmes.

The popular WorldBench testing suite was used in the tests, in which Kaspersky Anti-Virus 2010 received a rating of Advanced+, having demonstrated minimal impact on computer performance.

AV-Comparatives says that the Kaspersky Lab software scored higher in testing than the anti-virus solutions from Avast, AVG, BitDefender, Eset, G Data, McAfee, Microsoft and Symantec.

The full version of the report - `Performance Test. Impact of Antivirus Software on System Performance' - can be found on AV-Comparatives's website.