Razer DeathAdder Question.

[PhazeDelta1]

just got this last night and i wanted to say this is the best mouse i have ever owned. i freaking love this thing.

now i hve a question concerning the polling rate. what does it do? i have 3 settings, 125hz, 500hz and 1000hz. which one would i need to set it to?

thanks.

[Silent_Takedown]

I believe this is the time it takes for a/the mouse to send your movement to the computer, so the higher the polling rate the quicker the response will be when moving the cursor, so I think it's the lag between your movement and the actual cursor moving. Higher would be better for gaming in general but it's dependant on the person, might make your aim better but at the same time could make it worse. I know some people don't like their crosshair zipping all over the place. I'm not sure I would notice the difference but then I've been using the same mouse for the last 4 or 5 years and I think that's always had the same polling rate.

If someone has a more technical answer, please chip in

[S†v0r]

500mhz should be enough up to ~ 2000dpi, if you want more "control" then use 1000mhz, but don't use 1000mhz with 1600dpi or lower.. 1000mhz is meant for 2000dpi+

Polling rate is kinda like a pointer speed refresh rate:
125mhz - 8ms,
500mhz - 4ms,
1000mhz - 1ms.


I have razer copperhead with max 2000dpi/1000mhz, but its too sensitive at that dpi ^^ i've settled with 1600dpi/500mhz.

[PhazeDelta1]

thanks for the answer guys.

[Corrupt^]

Always set it to at least 500. Polling rate has an influence on how your mouse handles fast swipes. Even if the sensor is capable of it, if you swipe at 4 meters/second with 125Hz, the mouse might still fail to register properly, which is not going to happen at 500 or 1000.

Keep in mind it's no guarantee for always being able to swipe fast, the sensor has to be able to track that fast as well.

[sovietdoc]

let's hope this mouse doesn't fail on you within a year.

[PhazeDelta1]

as long as it last a year, idc after that. i normally change to a new mouse about once a year anyways. hopefully razer has something new by then.

[Cyberdyne]

The settings I personally use.

[Mufflore]

Originally Posted by sovietdoc

let's hope this mouse doesn't fail on you within a year.

Thats a waste of a hope dude!
I hope I meet a nice chick with big... um.

[Agent-A01]

I have the mouse and its lasted more than 3 years. I have it set to 3500dpi and 1000hz. Been like this forever

[Mufflore]

Similarly, mine is 4 years old in 2 months, never a problem and works perfectly on my sofa.
Its so good I dont even look at new mice.

[IcE]

Originally Posted by S†v0r

500mhz should be enough up to ~ 2000dpi, if you want more "control" then use 1000mhz, but don't use 1000mhz with 1600dpi or lower.. 1000mhz is meant for 2000dpi+

Polling rate is kinda like a pointer speed refresh rate:
125mhz - 8ms,
500mhz - 4ms,
1000mhz - 1ms.


I have razer copperhead with max 2000dpi/1000mhz, but its too sensitive at that dpi ^^ i've settled with 1600dpi/500mhz.

I'm pretty sure you have it wrong there, as 500hz should be 2ms meaning theres pretty much no difference between it and 1000hz functionally.

[Agent-A01]

Originally Posted by Mufflore

Similarly, mine is 4 years old in 2 months, never a problem and works perfectly on my sofa.
Its so good I dont even look at new mice.

Yeah ill get a razer mamba dual sensor 6400DPI when this one dies, i reckon it will last forever though

[PhazeDelta1]

Originally Posted by Agent-A01

Yeah ill get a razer mamba dual sensor 6400DPI when this one dies, i reckon it will last forever though

what would be the point of having a dpi that high?

[Agent-A01]

Originally Posted by Firestorm

what would be the point of having a dpi that high?

I suppose there wont be a huge difference between what i have already but it should help a bit, i can use a lower sensitivty.

[scheherazade]

Polling rate is how often the OS will ask the mouse how much it has moved.

The mouse will just return an integer for ticks moved up and an integer for ticks moved right.

Higher DPI mouse will return a larger number for ticks moved given the same real-world distance moved.

If you consistently move 100 ticks right, and poll once, you get +100.
If you poll twice as often, you get +50, +50.
If you poll four times as often, you get +25, +25, +25, +25.

Your OS is literally collecting these +/- X and Y changes, and adding them into an accumulator, the value of which is your X or Y position.

A game with raw mouse input can also fetch these deltas, and have an internal accumulator.

(In the spoiler block is removed text, as I realized that the mouse must be -N,0,and +N. Otherwise with -1,0,+1 the max speed would be capped by polling_rate / sensitivity, which AFAIK it isn't. 1000hz / 3500 dpi would be 0.285 inches per second, which is nonsense.)
Hence, ignore the bit in the spoiler block. I just left it in as food for thought...

 Click to show spoiler

Note that there is some abstraction here, and I don't remember exactly where it happens.
Most of the "polling" I'm referring to is the software asking the OS/driver/whatever for the mouse position - as that's the only thing that you can do as a user. You don't directly talk to the mouse.
Does the mouse hardware, when talking to the driver, only give -1, 0, and +1? Or does it give -N, 0, +N?
To the user, the driver will expose the mouse as -N, 0, and +N.
Whether or not the hardware comms between the mouse and driver are -1,0,+1 or -N,0,+N, I can't say.
But, I suspect the mouse<->driver comms also -N,0,+N, because that would explain why 16 bit mouse interfaces were needed as DPI got big ... small integers can't hold a large tick count in between being polled, but a 16 bit integer holds more.
(This matters because if the mouse hardware only says -1, 0, or +1, then you can't move more than 1 dot before polling. Otherwise you lose data.)

These ticks are usually scaled at the user side to provide more accuracy.
Eg, a 100 dpi mouse will give 100 ticks per inch. A 2000 dpi mouse will give 2000 ticks per inch.
If you treat the mice the same, one just "moves faster/farther" on screen for the same real-world travel.
In order to convert speed into accuracy, you use lower sensitivity.
A 2000 dpi mouse will match a 100 dpi mouse's speed using 1/20 of the sensitivity, but will be able to detect a movement 1/20th of the distance that a 100 dpi mouse can.

Your goal with polling rate is to have the most-recent mouse update possible, available, when software asks for a mouse update.

This gets into the issue of temporal aliasing. How old can your mouse data be, when you're drawing a frame, before you notice?
And if mouse data is updated just before, or just after a frame, in an inconsistent manner (eg. alternating), how old must the data be before you notice jitter in your movement?

You could say that the nyquist frequency is sufficient (maybe minimum of 2x your current framerate, if that's how you can apply it to this problem...).

I would personally use anything form 2x your refresh rate, up to the shortest interval that you can reasonably detect and mentally process.

Eg. At 60hz, I should sample at a minimum of 120+ hz (8.3ms).
I know that on my very best days, I can just start to be affected by as little as +10ms or more network ping on a low-ping-server 1v1 match, so I generally consider +10ms my minimum sensitivity threshold. As a result, I generally shoot for under 10ms system lag from input to eyes, just to be safe.
With a 120hz monitor, I get 8.3ms lag right there. So I would like my mouse update to not push that figure over 10, which is only 1.7ms in itself. So, that's basically 2ms, or 500hz +.
That generally pans out. In a 1v1 I can tell between 125 and 250 pretty easily. 250 to 500 is still noticed, but negligible. 500 and 1000 feel the same to me. So I feel good about 500.
There is of course plenty more processing lag along the way, so it's not worth being totally strict about these things, unless you go for the minimize-everything-because-it-all-adds-up approach.

-scheherazade

[PhazeDelta1]

well after messing around with the settings, i have it set to 3500dpi, 1000hz. i set the sensitivity to 6. the movement is like i have my mouse on glass. one more thing, what does the settings for the axe y and axe x do? also, what about the enable x/y master sensitivity?

[scheherazade]

Originally Posted by Firestorm

well after messing around with the settings, i have it set to 3500dpi, 1000hz. i set the sensitivity to 6. the movement is like i have my mouse on glass. one more thing, what does the settings for the axe y and axe x do? also, what about the enable x/y master sensitivity?

That's for having different sensitivity when moving the mouse left/right (X), and moving the mouse up/down (Y).

Most people use one [matching] sensitivity for both X and Y.

-scheherazade

[S†v0r]

Originally Posted by ice445

I'm pretty sure you have it wrong there, as 500hz should be 2ms meaning theres pretty much no difference between it and 1000hz functionally.

ah sorry my bad, yea i was thinking in advance

[killer_939]

I use 1:1 in windows, 450 dpi at 500hz. I like the buttons on my ime 3.0 more tbh but everything else about the deathadder is good.

[Mufflore]

I figured this thread needs an update.

After 4 years and one month, my Deathadder got an occasional double click problem on the primary mouse button.
It took about 15 mins to fix it (and I gave it a good clean) by unscrewing it and placing a drop of cycle chain oil on the tip of each button switch.
Good as new again

I sort of wanted it to be permanently broken so I can get a new mouse, its hard for me to throw away something that can be fixed.
Oh well.

[Mufflore]

Soz to keep raising this thread but...

The primary button is worse than ever now (double clicking a lot) and the middle button has started doing it too.
I'm replacing this mouse.

Deathadder RIP, 4 years old.

[Anfield82]

My Lachesis is still going after 4 years

[Veteran]

Longest lasting mouse i had was Logitech G5(first edition) lasting 6 years.2005-2011.It was my BF2 workhorse.

[Corrupt^]

500 or 1000 Hz, use both and then pick your preferred one.