Mouse Polling Rate

[FierceKatana]

I was wondering why people adjust their mouse polling rates to anything higher than their monitor refresh rate.


For instance, my Logitech G7 settings have polling rates of 125. 200, 250, 333, & 500.


My monitor (HDTV) however only has a 60hz maximum refresh rate.


How can I possibly benefit from any mouse polling rate higher than 60?

How is more than 1 mouse update per frame going to benefit me?

Wouldn't a mouse polling rate of 500 essentially be wasting 440 mouse updates every second? (7 mouse updates per frame)


I currently have it set to 125 and just as I suspected, its just as responsive and fluid as it was when I unknowingly had it set to 500.

[Mcninjaguy]

Well your mouse is very high end and you might get more response with lower end mice at higher polling rates.

Polling rates are how many times per minute or second the mouse reports to the computer. I have a logitech G9 and I have mine set to 3200 dpi and 1000 polling rate. The monitor refresh rate has no relevance to the polling rate. The polling just allows for smoother mouse play.

If you have a low end CPU your mouse's polling rate may effect your CPU.

The monitor's refresh rate is more to do with the graphics card. A monitor like yours can only display 60hz or 60 frames per second maximum at any given time. That doesn't mean though that your monitor will break if your graphics card is giving out more frames per second either. It just outputs 60 FPS max.

I hope this response clears up a couple things for you.

The higher the polling rate the smoother your mouse will respond.

[FierceKatana]

hm yea I understand all of that quite well

My question however assumes that VSYNC is enabled, thereby limiting my framerate to 60.

Even though the mouse and monitor are not officially tied together, they can be set to perform the same amount of operations per second.


The Question crux:
With VSYNC, I will never, ever be able to see more than 60 changes in camera angle per second (what 99% of games use mice for). So why more than 60 changes in mouse coordinates?

Note: at a 1000 polling rate, at 120hz (giving you the benefit of the doubt), you are still reciving 8 sets of mouse coordinates per FRAME. What good is a mouse coordinate that changes 8 times during a single frame?

Im not saying anything will explode, but I'm trying to verify that it is perhaps unnecessary as it uses more cpu cycles trying to reflect your mouses most up-to-date coordinates.

If it did *something* I would be happy, but I cannot accept the general dogma "it makes it more accurate" without technical explanation.

If a mouse cursor is a sprite on your screen, then it is limited by your monitor's refresh rate. A polling rate is also a refresh rate of sorts. Why not unofficially sync them?

[Mcninjaguy]

I personally would say to keep it at whatever polling rate you like it as. The difference is probably negligible from 500 and up.

With a smaller polling rate you might have a harder time sniping in games. This is just because your mouse can't register small movements as well and your gun will jump to location.

I have a 3ghz dual and the 1,000 poling rate I use has no affect on my game's performance. I would leave it the highest polling rate just so your gameplay is the smoothest possible. If you have a really low end computer that doesn't have a nice dual core then yes you will probably notice a slight increase in CPU usage.

I'm not really saying anything at all, its all up to you.

Can I just know your computer specifications?

RAM
CPU
Graphics Card
Motherboard
Power supply
HDD

[FierceKatana]

Sure.

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QX6700 Quad

Twin GTX 280 (SLI)

8gb DDR2-1066 @ 4-4-4-12


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The possible jumping you describe in sniping sounds more like low DPI, which is completely seperate from Polling rate. (to my current understanding)

For instance, I once had Double-A battery powered microsoft '1800' DPI mouse that was very accurate, but it noticably jumped from coord to coord. The mouse itself felt like it was only recording 20 or so coordinates per second. No matter how hard a PC polls, it cannot grab coordinates faster than the mouse.

This is another similar issue to look into: why poll the mouse 1000 times per second if your mouse only generates 500 coords per second?

The reason I press the issue does have to do with performance somewhat, but moreso just efficiency and proof of concept. I'm debating this issue with a friend & no site on the net explains how mouse accuracy can surpass 'what you see'. They simply say more is better. My hardline position is that is you poll at anything higher than your framerate, you get nothing.

(im going to test this today by custom polling at 20, 30, 60, and above)

All things considered, I just dont see how a mouse can be smoother than your monitors max framerate. I appreciate your taking time to answer my post though. =P

[Mcninjaguy]

Yea this issue confuses me a bit too. I use a logitech G9 and I play games with it on 1000 polling and 3200 dpi and I see my mouse's movement as very smooth indeed.

I think I found what you are looking for. Polling rate = response time.

The Revelation

And then, amongst the other download links on the Logitech website, I found their very own mouse driver & tweaking tool: SetPoint. This ordinarily wouldn’t have been too important a discovery, if it weren’t for the fact that SetPoint allows you to alter the polling rates for your mouse’s USB port beyond the Windows-enforced limit of 125Hz. What this does is allow your mouse to report more data to your computer, resulting in a smoother and more accurate response.

The Windows-enforced standard of 125Hz gives a standard response time (lag) of 8ms, but setting your polling rate at 250Hz reduces this to 4ms. SetPoint allows you to set polling rates as high as 1000Hz, at the expense of some resource utilization. At 1000Hz your response time will have been reduced to a mere 1ms, which should provide a notable advantage in any competitive gaming environment. The difference between 125Hz and 1000Hz is immediately noticeable, as the mouse becomes noticeably more responsive.

Source

[Indoril Nerevar]

Hi FierceKatana,

It's a subtle concept, but when you think about it, it actually is good to have your mouse reporting a lot quicker than your monitor. At higher mouse poll rates, you know that your mouse will be closer to where you want it to be on each frame your monitor shows. Think about it like this:

With your graphics set to 60Hz (VSync on), your monitor will refresh 60 times per second at most. This means you have 60 opportunities per second to see where your crosshair/pointer is. If you set your mouse poll rate to 60Hz, it means you also only have 60 opportunities per second to get your mouse in the right place. The more times the mouse reports its position per second, the more accurate and less choppy the movement will be when you get a chance to see it (each frame)


Personally, I think getting into mouse polling rate is getting too serious about what you're doing. I play all my games with a generic keyboard and a Microsoft Basic mouse, and I do just fine.

[Mcninjaguy]

People can react a little faster than 2ms if there is muscle memory. Which is when you do something so many times your brain doesn't think it just does it. Its like when a Martial Arts expert has practiced a spinning kick they don't need to think about turning their feet, jumping and when to kick they just do it. Think muscle memory = RAM.

So my mouse reacts at 1ms so I am not limited by the mouse but my own playing abilities.