Austrian security company Emsisoft has launched a public beta test of Anti-Malware 6, its flagship antivirus tool.

And the focus this time around has clearly been performance, with the company claiming a new multi-core optimised scanning engine is on average 450% faster than the previous version.

The next benefit comes from a new scheme for identifying trustworthy files. These then don’t have to be scanned in future unless they’ve changed, providing another speed boost.

And, the company claims, further optimisations have “drastically” reduced Anti-Malware’s impact on the boot process.

Elsewhere, a new direct disk access scan mode allows Anti-Malware 6 to uncover even the stealthiest of file-based rootkits. (As long as you’re not using a striped RAID setup, anyway: the program doesn’t support this yet, although it will by the final release.)

And there are various usability tweaks dotted all around the package. Options which can’t be undone, for instance, such as deleting a file in quarantine, now display a confirmation dialog for safety. And if you change some complex group of settings, like the file extensions you’d like Anti-Malware 6 to check, then a new “Reset Defaults” option can reverse your tweaks, if necessary, at a click.

Emsisoft says that if testing goes well then the finished build of Anti-Malware 6 should be released within the next two months. But if you can’t wait, no problem – the first beta is available for download now.