[AstralWanderer]

Fyron said:
Firewalls and resident AV engines use almost 0% of CPU cycles... unless you are running some sort of Norton bloatware or something?

Firewall CPU usage will depend on the amount of network traffic it has to process - some filesharing programs can open hundreds or even thousands of connections resulting in significant CPU usage on some systems. For AVs, it depends on how much they have to scan - those with web traffic scanners can slow throughput if they don't have enough CPU.

Of course there are examples of both AVs and firewalls that minimise CPU usage, but in many cases by performing less thorough checks (poorer unpacking support for AVs, weaker leaktest performance for firewalls).