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Check your gaming mouse polling rate with mouserate.exe

I'm not a big PC gamer but I do enjoy the odd hour online playing ET (Wolfenstein - Enemy Territory). Recently I've been disappointed with my accuracy and aiming, I just seem to always miss when in the middle of a frantic firefight.

I had read on an ET forum that a good way to improve your aim was to download and consume 'Aiming by RaZiel'. After reading some of the documentation and watching a couple of the movies in this pack I wanted to try and 'tweak' my mouse configuration.

One tip was to increase the mouse polling rate within Windows so that it would be read faster and therefore give a more accurate reading on the mouse's position. One way that you can check your mouse polling rate is with the rather handy 'mouserate' by Oliver Andreas Tscherwitschke.

It's a tiny download that contains a simple executable file that pops up a window which gives you an area in which to move your mouse around, and a list of the polled rate on the right-hand side (along with an overall average).

screenshot of mouserate window

When I first ran this program with my Microsoft optical Intellimouse plugged into the PS/2 port (via the green USB adapter) I got an average reading of just less than 100Hz. I then tried plugging the mouse directly into a free USB port and got pretty much the same readings so at least I know that the talk of PS/2 mice giving a steadier polling rate must only apply to 'true' PS/2 mice, not USB mice with PS/2 adapters.

Try it out and see what polling rate you get, I would be interested to hear what you have to say.

P.S. Have you noticed in the picture above that my polling rate is a fair bit higher than the 100Hz that I've talked about? More in a future post... ;-)

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Comments

Anonymous said…
I have just purchased the Razer Copperhead, and I get polling rates of well over 1000 Hz
Anonymous said…
Razer Diamondback, 125 hz... (how is that right...)
Anonymous said…
Haha, i get anywhere between 86 and 1974 with a Logitech G5 on USB port. Average is 500 Hz. That's ample for a mouse.
Anonymous said…
USB Mouserate Switcher 1.1 will def increate ur mouse's polling up to 1000hz+, my Microsoft intellimouse 1.1 can pull up to 3300hz+
Anonymous said…
125 is standard for USB
my G5 does 500 Hz standard with Logitech Setpoint drivers

It also has an option for 1000 Hz but then the rate isnt stable enough

A stable rate is what you need for perfect aiming not a high one.
Anonymous said…
hmmm 900 to 1100, brings it up to 1000~1010 average, which is perfect for a gaming :-)
@ USB port, MS HABU.
Anonymous said…
I use standard PS/2 HP mouse at my office and it gives me 109 Hz in average.
Anonymous said…
thnx a lot...me too find this for knowledge...d diff is dat i m a big gamer..... :P again thnx a lot :)
Anonymous said…
You do realise that PS2 is interrupt based, rather than polling, so any readings you get will be incorrect.