Mouse DPI and USB Polling Rate

now…just to get things a bit wierd…how about joining in the pentablet? just wierd that i can’t get it to work for my games though…used a4tech’s keyboard combo Wireless (but now i replaced the mouse since the one that came in with the combo kept clicking even without me clicking it…) but now my sister got me to use her wacom…and my mouse been stuck in the corner of my table since…

hmmm…after doing the tweak for the mouse…i’m not toosure…but i think it also twaeked my desktop…i definitely feel a 10-15% inchrease in responsiveness to desktop use (browser opening, file transfer…) well must be because i’ve installed the proper drivers for my keyboard and mouse? before it was just running on HUD device driver…but now…i definitely expereience a fater pc (at least 10-15%-wise)…also tried this tweak if it inreases my usb output a bit…because my psp wasnt charging on the usb before…since it was as said on lowe power output…

I had achey wrist through using a cheapo mouse/keyboard a few years ago and decided to go down the path of the ergonomic keyboard (Microsoft Natural Elite) and a Logitech Marble mouse, this sorted me out. However the trackball was/is only 400 dpi which was fine for general use but I felt it was holding me back in FPS gaming (original Enemy Territories)so after masses of research I went and got a Habu. After the initial problems with version 1.0 firmware I’ve never looked back, a wonderful comfy bit of kit. I run it at 1000mhz and 1600dpi and now I’ve only myself to blame for not gettin those headshots :slight_smile:

get the lachesis from razer… 4000 dpi and easy user friendly fermware… its quite expensive tho (80$)

I also have a Habu mouse, well my second one ( the first one, some buttons stopped working. Anyways like Mike, who posted nearer the beginning, the program usbmr11 will not work. I am assuming that even though my Habu mouse will allow a high polling rate that XP won’t allow it…true or not. When I use a mouse rate checker it still tells me that the poll rate is 125 hz or near and abouts.

I should edit what I said above. The program isn’t working for me. I know it’s worked for others :(. I guess the properly phrased question should be this. If this program doesn’t work on my OS, will the Habu software find a way around this or will it be unable to because of XP defaults?
Thanks

Concerning the polling rate: I don’t understand why one would need faster polling rates than screen updates (60hz!).

Can you please explain? Thanks!

Dilly: I’m not sure about the habu specs, but I think seeing it is a ms-razer hybrid and a gaming mouse that it should already be 500hz or rather, have that or instantly defaulting to it when you install the drivers, as well as options to change it. Or rather, silly me, *scrolling up looking at original blog entry and screenshot of driver - it does put simply! So you dont really need the tweak it’s really mainly for older gaming mice, like the logitech mx518 or ms ie 1/3.0, and putting it on top of each other (with a new mice with it down out of the box w driver) might be a bad idea, but as i’ll come to it might not even be possible and I really dont know. And another thing on the subject is that most can’t really pull off an hz of 1000 and hardly 500hz, from what i’ve read.

Also on the error message when patching; i’ve got the same problem and someone said somewhere basically like the error message puts it that it comes off the usbport.sys not being the original default one. I tried the Razer copperhead after formating and reinstalling windows recently and then went back to my mx518 and i’m thinking Razer modified the usbport.sys somehow which might seem logical (but i’m not getting a higher hz out of my mx518, and i’m using the same usb port), or possibly that my custom windows rev had some usb tweaks, but if it’s the first case that might explain your situation as well. You should have no problems getting a higher polling rate with the habu and driver. Look for the same option screen as in the blog entry and try out the different rates, you’ll notice an deciding difference from each one.

Hm. Forget what I said about Razer drivers modifying the usbport.sys, apparently Windows service pack updates have brought in some changes that the abandoned fix haven’t caught up with (relevant to any other googlers like me):

http://www.tcmagazine.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t543.html

And google: “HIDUSBF”.

Last note - just thought my last line was unnecessarily vague and even more so after prodding on and striking gold :slight_smile:

What hidusbf does is that it only modifies the port which uses the mouse, so it’s pretty neat. And last entry in the readme is dated 2007/05/06, and I can confirm that it works (yay!). An hz of 250 seems the most stable for my mx518.

a href="http://sweetlow.at.tut.by/download/hidusbf.zip"http://sweetlow.at.tut.by/download/hidusbf.zip/a

I agree that HIDUSBF works great. I used USBMRS11 before, but recently installed XP SP3 and it’s no longer compatible, while HIDUSBF works fine. The utility is regularly updated too, with the latest version from April now compatible with 64 bit releases of Vista and XP.

Concerning the polling rate: I don’t understand why one would need faster polling rates than screen updates (60hz!).

One reason why an increased polling rate can make a difference is that while the default rate is faster than most screens can display, it is still slow enough that there will be a delay of up to 8ms between readings of the mouse coordinates. This delay will fluctuate between 0 and 8ms. Assuming a game is rendered at 60 frames per second, the image on your screen will be 16ms old, but the age of the position you’re pointing at will fluctuate between 16 and 24ms. Not only will this add a slight delay to your actions, but it will make precision aiming a little choppier and less predictable. At 500hz, the mouse’s position is at most 2ms old, so the variance between frames is reduced, smoothing out your movement. One other thing to note is that most recent CRT monitors can refresh a lot faster than 60hz, in which case the smoother movement can make an even more noticeable difference in this regard.

Another reason to increase your USB polling rate is that many mice are only able to track a limited distance before filling their internal buffer. If a 1000 dpi mouse has an 8 bit buffer, it will become full by travelling just an eighth of an inch, or about 3mm between pollings. After that, any further movement will be ignored until the mouse is polled again, and its buffer cleared. This effectively limits the maximum speed the mouse can detect, even if its sensor is capable of handling more. When polled more often, the buffer has a chance to be cleared before reaching this limit, and the result is movement that more accurately follows the mouse at higher speeds. Not all mice can take full advantage of higher polling rates in this way, but some, like my MX500, can perfectly track 800dpi at 500hz. Most other wired USB mice will show at least some improvement with their polling rate increased.

Here is the best analysis of mouse sensitivity and gaming I have read:
http://www.esreality.com/?a=postid=1265679

It’s actual benchmarking and has hard numbers. The article is approached like a scientific study. The really high sensitivity in some high end mice is really unnecessary. He breaks gamers into High Sensitivity (don’t have to move mouse much to move a lot in the game), Low Sensitivity (have to move the mouse a lot to move a little in the game - kind of good for sniping accuracy), and Medium Sensitivity, and he assigns mouse moving speeds (see page 2). Most players are Medium Sensitivity and they need about 400 dpi in their mouse. Plain old solid Microsoft Wheel Mouse Opticals have that and that’s what I’ve been using for about 8 years (it’s stood up to abuse for that long too). I think I’m a medium sensitivity gamer though.

Now they just need to benchmark the newer mice every few years.

Had a razer a while back (one of the 1600dpi versions, Magma I think it was)… ended up having it on the return loop for a few months. Eventually out of desperation the retailer gave me a Boomslang; which seemed to be a bit more stable. Stable is relative though:
You get a couple of configurable buttons, so long as you only want to configure two of them.
Don’t, ever, ever, ever, ever try to change the USB port the mouse is originally configured for. Ever. Ever. Ever…

Pointless anecdotes aside, hopefully they’ve made some leaps in their Quality Control dept… when Razors work, they work very well.

This is currently my favorite mouse ever: http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/mouseandkeyboard/productdetails.aspx?pid=086

Once I bought my first one a couple of weeks ago, I was hooked and purchased one for each of my machines.

I noticed you mentioned wired as one of your prereqs…why is that? I got my first wireless mouse a couple of years ago and can’t imagine going back to wired at this point.

It’s nice to know I’m not the only trackball man around! Something about the detail you can get with just your thumb is great. I can you can get more distance per movement out of it without having to make the mouse super sensitive.

Though I have to admit that that blue glow is pretty slick, my red trackball glow is kind of boring at times 8^D

joev, check out the Microsoft Trackball Optical. Apparently they stopped producing them, but many places still have plenty in stock. Buy 3. The thing I like about this over the original trackball is the optical read (far less cleaning) and the configurable “outer buttons”. I set mine to Copy and Paste and my day to day stuff goes so much faster.

…and if you REALLY want to finish the collection off pick up a MS Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 8^D

Its been a while since I used to have my “fragfests” of Unreal Tournament (yeah, the original 8^D). I would wager that you’d select the best DPI/Polling rate to match your play style so that it “feels” optimal to you. I never got into the intense mouses or anything like that, but there is definitely a feel to things when you’re running around and fraggin’ it up.