AVG causing programs to use high CPU

I've recently downloaded AVG 2012 and ever since then programs like firefox and utorrent have been using so much CPU it's to the point were my laptop locks up. Now I know it's AVG causing these problems as these programs never used up any CPU before installing AVG 2012. I've ran virus scans, malware scans etc... and have found nothing I know the culprit is AVG 2012. So what can I do besides uninstall AVG 2012 to stop it from using so much CPU. It's also causing other programs themselves to run at high CPU usage. i.e firefox will completely lock up ever so frequently and utorrent will have disk overload problems both of which never happened before. So what do I do to stop/help this issue? (besides completely delete AVG 2012)? If in the end I have to delete AVG 2012 I will but what's another good security/ant-virus program?