Mice with high dpi

E

exe163

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 15, 2005
Messages
1,366
What is the matter with all the recent mouses (gaming) with insanely high DPI? I have a gen 2 G5, it can go up to 2000dpi, but I only use it at 1200 99% of the time. When I play games I often turn my mouse sensitivity to near lowest. Do people like to do 720 degree spin by moving the mouse a micrometer to the left or right? I really don't get the purpose of having such high dpi besides marketing gimmick.
 
I have a Rosewill high dpi mouse that I bought so I have a mouse when repairing PC's and it just moves too much.
I use an MX 1000 which says 20x on the bottom but I think the dpi is less than 1000, and it works great for FPS gaming use.
 
The insanely high ones are gimmicky IMO. I use one that caps at 1800, and it's great for what I use it for.
 
high dpi CAN be useful in some occasions if you really know what you're doing when finetuning your setup, here's a neat calculator http://h8m3.wippiespace.com/pack/DPI.xls just enter your desired FOV horizontal resolution and sensitivity in cm/360 and it will tell you how much dpi you'll need and what's the highest ingame sensitivity value you can use without skipping pixels

Problem is that mouse companies and gamers alike should care a lot more about ergonomics polling rate prediction algorithms ( http://hardware.gotfrag.com/portal/forums/thread/306678/ ) negative acceleration and build quality instead of adjustable weights lights pure oxygen copper wires shiny packaging and all that crap
 
Zepher said:
I have a Rosewill high dpi mouse that I bought so I have a mouse when repairing PC's and it just moves too much.
I use an MX 1000 which says 20x on the bottom but I think the dpi is less than 1000, and it works great for FPS gaming use.
Click to expand...

I believe the MX 1000 has highest DPI of 1600, I had one but find it too cumbersome for gaming.

If there were only ways to put DPI toward accuracy instead of speed, I think we could take advantage of the extra DPI.
 
SoFGR said:
high dpi CAN be useful in some occasions if you really know what you're doing when finetuning your setup, here's a neat calculator http://h8m3.wippiespace.com/pack/DPI.xls just enter your desired FOV horizontal resolution and sensitivity in cm/360 and it will tell you how much dpi you'll need and what's the highest ingame sensitivity value you can use without skipping pixels

Problem is that mouse companies and gamers alike should care a lot more about ergonomics polling rate prediction algorithms ( http://hardware.gotfrag.com/portal/forums/thread/306678/ ) negative acceleration and build quality instead of adjustable weights lights pure oxygen copper wires shiny packaging and all that crap
Click to expand...

I wish I could understand what that calculator was talking about. Do you know of a clearer one?
 
Zepher said:
I use an MX 1000 which says 20x on the bottom but I think the dpi is less than 1000, and it works great for FPS gaming use.
Click to expand...
exe163 said:
I believe the MX 1000 has highest DPI of 1600, I had one but find it too cumbersome for gaming.
Click to expand...
The MX1000 has an 800DPI sensor.

The real benefit of high-DPI mice is not the speed, but the added precision. Even when you lower the mouse down to a lower "DPI" level, it's really just lowering the speed, but it's still running at the same resolution internally, so the mouse tracking will be smoother. However, in practice, the difference between a 1600DPI sensor and a 5000DPI sensor is really not noticeable.
 
exe163 said:
I believe the MX 1000 has highest DPI of 1600, I had one but find it too cumbersome for gaming.
Click to expand...

Most of the Razer mice have higher than 1600 DPI. The Mamba I believe has the highest at 5600 DPI.
 
exe163 said:
What is the matter with all the recent mouses (gaming) with insanely high DPI? I have a gen 2 G5, it can go up to 2000dpi, but I only use it at 1200 99% of the time. When I play games I often turn my mouse sensitivity to near lowest. Do people like to do 720 degree spin by moving the mouse a micrometer to the left or right? I really don't get the purpose of having such high dpi besides marketing gimmick.
Click to expand...

What ideally you want is per pixel aiming, this is where you move your mouse the smallest amount and the whole scene appears to skip 1 pixel side to side....that is to say if your target is 10pixels wide when you turn left and right the whole 10px width moves only 1px to the side.

Without a high dpi mouse your crosshair will skip multiple pixel and that cna make it hard to hit something. You can more or less work out the DPI you need, it depends on your prefered mouse sensitivity (inches to do a full 360) and your screen resolution.

With a large screen like 2560x1600 or 1920x1200 you start needing some high dpi mice in order to keep per pixel aiming, especially with high sensitivity.

With 100 degrees approx hFOV for widescreen, and 2560 pixels on my monitor that means theres 25.6 pixels per degree of horizontal rotation and so 9,216 per 360 degrees.

If you want 1 inch per 360 degrees sensitivity on your mouse then you'd need a 9,216 DPI mouse. I prefer sensitive but not that sensitive, im at about 2 inches for a 360 turn so only need 1/2 the DPI which is about 4,608 DPI

Obviously if you have a 1024 pix monitor and like large 5-10 inches per 360 degrees then the high dpi probably wont help, depends entirely on the person.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
What ideally you want is per pixel aiming, this is where you move your mouse the smallest amount and the whole scene appears to skip 1 pixel side to side....that is to say if your target is 10pixels wide when you turn left and right the whole 10px width moves only 1px to the side.

Without a high dpi mouse your crosshair will skip multiple pixel and that cna make it hard to hit something. You can more or less work out the DPI you need, it depends on your prefered mouse sensitivity (inches to do a full 360) and your screen resolution.

With a large screen like 2560x1600 or 1920x1200 you start needing some high dpi mice in order to keep per pixel aiming, especially with high sensitivity.

With 100 degrees approx hFOV for widescreen, and 2560 pixels on my monitor that means theres 25.6 pixels per degree of horizontal rotation and so 9,216 per 360 degrees.

If you want 1 inch per 360 degrees sensitivity on your mouse then you'd need a 9,216 DPI mouse. I prefer sensitive but not that sensitive, im at about 2 inches for a 360 turn so only need 1/2 the DPI which is about 4,608 DPI

Obviously if you have a 1024 pix monitor and like large 5-10 inches per 360 degrees then the high dpi probably wont help, depends entirely on the person.
Click to expand...

You are definitely smarter than the typical newb on this forum. Finally, someone who can do some analytical calculations
 
Too lazy to read all this but know that any more than 800dpi is useless and only marketing.
 
Ke422azn said:
And your rationale is? Entertain me. I have a Chemical Engineering degree. I can handle maths.
Click to expand...

it's not very complicated, just use the calculators. the point is the amount of dpi that makes a difference is relative to the res you play at, so for most people anything above a decent value is useless since it's already more than you need.
 
OK so it's best just to put that maths into an easy to use equation.

  • hS = Horizontal Sensitivity in number of inches to do a horizontal 360 turn in game
  • hR = Horizontal Resolution
  • hF = Horizontal FoV (about 90 degrees for PC games in 4:3 and 102 degrees for 16:10)

So just plug those values in to this equation, and you'll get the minimum DPI you need to maintain per pixel aiming.

DPI = ((hR / hF) * 360) / hS)

Realisitc values for these might be

  • 5 inches
  • 1680 (22" widescreen monitor typically uses 1680x1050)
  • 102 (typical hFoV for FPS game is 90 degrees for 4:3 aspect ratio and about 102 for 16:10)

(((1680 / 102) * 360 ) / 5) = 1,185

The DPI you need is proportional to your screen resolution (larger res larger DPI required) and inversely proportional to your hFoV (larger FoV the less DPI you need), and inversely proportional to your mouse sensitivity, (larger number of inches per 360 you want the less DPI you need)

Another example might be

  • 3 inches
  • 2560
  • 75 (console ports tend to have very low FoV and also fixed FoV which doesn't increase to facilitate widescreen)

(((2560 / 75) * 360 ) / 3) = 4,096 DPI

You can justify high DPI mice, you just need to be a high sensitivity gamer and be playing at reasonably high resolutions.
 
Last edited:
i just got the mx518 from my mx310. to be honest i dont feel anything different.
 
I went with a Razer Copperhead primarily for the ergonomics. It tops out at 2000dpi but I use lower, don't remember which. But the nice thing is that it's got 5 configurable settings and can be changed "on the fly" with the push of a button on the bottom. I'd imagine other mice have the same feature.
 
If you have a mouse with an adjustable DPI. Set it to highest, and then go to the games control panel and set the mouse sensitivity lower until you're comfortable with it. That's how you're supposed to take advantage of high DPIs.



This is how i'd describe mouse resolution

mousedpiqq9.jpg


Each of those intersections represent where the crosshair would be if you were to move the mouse one unit in any direction.

Several years ago, mouse DPI resolutions were pretty low. Anyone that's played CounterStrike beta with the sensitivity on high can tell you that back then, their crosshairs would often overshoot. I myself have to straffe a bit to compensate for it.

These days tho, mouse resolution has become moot. Even the lowest end optical mouse will still be enough to cover the whole screen at their lowest DPI.



Personally, my sensitivity is always set so that 1 inch allows me to turn 180 degrees (Claw grip). With a 2000dpi mouse, that 180 degrees will be subdivided into 2,000 slices. Which is kinda overkill for what i need.
 
Last edited:
Basically the need for DPI depends on how much you are willing to move the mouse. If you are willing to move the mouse 10 inches for a 180 turn, then at 800 dpi, you are probably going to get pixel by pixel movement.


But if you have a high resolution monitor, and you only want to move 1 inch for a 180 degree rotation, then you better have a high DPI mouse or its going to skip pixels.

I have the copperhead too which is 2000. I also have the lachesis which is 4000 but because the lachesis feels like shlt, im not using it.
 
I always have my g9 set to 3200 dpi and a speed of 5 in setpoint. I also have the speeds in games set so it feels about the same as the desktop. I game at 1920x1080 and use an Icemat v1. My wrist never moves. I use my hand/fingers to move in an area of 1-2 inches on my surface. The point of high dpi is that I can maintain precise and smooth movements even at really high speeds. The only thing that fucks me over is when developers think they have to keep mouse acceleration on with no option to turn it off...mostly in crappy port jobs.
 
I like high dpi mice and high sensitivity and high resolutions. I move my mouse .5" for 360°.
 
PrincessFrosty said:
What ideally you want is per pixel aiming, this is where you move your mouse the smallest amount and the whole scene appears to skip 1 pixel side to side....that is to say if your target is 10pixels wide when you turn left and right the whole 10px width moves only 1px to the side.

Without a high dpi mouse your crosshair will skip multiple pixel and that cna make it hard to hit something. You can more or less work out the DPI you need, it depends on your prefered mouse sensitivity (inches to do a full 360) and your screen resolution.

With a large screen like 2560x1600 or 1920x1200 you start needing some high dpi mice in order to keep per pixel aiming, especially with high sensitivity.

With 100 degrees approx hFOV for widescreen, and 2560 pixels on my monitor that means theres 25.6 pixels per degree of horizontal rotation and so 9,216 per 360 degrees.

If you want 1 inch per 360 degrees sensitivity on your mouse then you'd need a 9,216 DPI mouse. I prefer sensitive but not that sensitive, im at about 2 inches for a 360 turn so only need 1/2 the DPI which is about 4,608 DPI

Obviously if you have a 1024 pix monitor and like large 5-10 inches per 360 degrees then the high dpi probably wont help, depends entirely on the person.
Click to expand...

This guy's got it in one.

You can do a basic test of your mouse's accuracy by planting your wrist down firmly in the center of the mouse pad and putting the cursor in the center of the screen. Then make circles with your mouse as fast as you can by using ONLY your fingers. You would expect the cursor to just make circles around the center of the screen right? But the cursor eventually starts drifting away, and you may end up making circles in the corner of the screen. This isn't a 1 to 1 match to your actual movement because your wrist is still planted in the center.

The cursor drifts away from the center because it's not measuring the movement accurately enough and the deviations in the circles build up over time.

It's not going to give you a hard number, but it's an easy way to see the difference in the performance of the mouse.


However, an important thing to keep in mind is that the added precision only makes a difference to players who will use it. Per-pixel aiming does nothing to help a player that just blazes bullets in the general vicinity of the target, hoping one of them will hit. When you watch other people playing through the death cam, you can see that the vast majority of players don't think too much about where they're shooting.

As your skill grows, and you find that you miss the headshot because the mouse went farther than you specifically intended to move, then you might want a more precise mouse. If you were only intended to hit them somewhere on the body it's not going to make much difference. It takes active control and intent to really take advantage of improved precision to make a difference in your gameplay.
 
Last edited:
Definitely interesting discussion.

One other way to think about this is to consider a player's response time. In my case I need >1800 DPI at 1920 x 1200 to be precise, because I prefer to get to my target by moving my mouse a short distance with high speed. Per pixel aiming works for me.

That's just the way my reflexes work. If I have to move my mouse 3" to hit a target I suck. I tend to overshoot the target in that case. Short quick movements improve my gameplay, so higher DPI works for me.

It really comes down to what works for your reflexes and resolution. Similar to a putter in golf, I suppose.
 
Simple, cheap mice are low res and most people learn to game with them set at high sensitivity, but greater fidelity can be had with greater resolution and generally lower sensitivity (unless you have MAD tweak skills :p)
 
i love my razor diamond back. i think its 1500dpi or so....i had to tune it down it was so responsive lol.
 
Guys, taking advantage of higher DPI does not equate to a higher sensitivity in motion. DPI is for higher precision, you use your mouse sensitivity options in your game and windows to adjust the interpolation to preference.

Here is a clip of how most competitive gamers use their mouse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlqJlUqz-hA&feature=related

High DPI and super low Sens. Some people will play with 0.4 sens or lower. Most gamers don't want to use their mouse like this.
 
Last edited:
Baera said:
Guys, taking advantage of higher DPI does not equate to a higher sensitivity in motion. DPI is for higher precision, you use your mouse sensitivity options in your game and windows to adjust the interpolation to preference.

Here is a clip of how most competitive gamers use their mouse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlqJlUqz-hA&feature=related

High DPI and super low Sens. Some people will play with 0.4 sens or lower. Most gamers don't want to use their mouse like this.
Click to expand...

fail ! that's a mx300 he's using, 400dpi @ 500hz, very few optical mice can keep up with these movements, if you're using ultra low igame sens and tons of dpi at the same time you'll get massive amounts of negative accel due to cursor clipping (especially at low resolutions )

You can implement direct input ( which adds a little bit of mouse lag ) or use this tweak ( http://www.digitalise.net/2009/01/03/rinput-released/ ) but the same rule will still apply, higher dpi = lower max perfect control speed due to 16bit data path restrictions ,older mice with 8bit-12bit data path had even more limitations so low sensitivity payers always preferred 400dpi, mx518 for example has a much higher max perfect control speed than 2 m/s if you set it at 400/800dpi instead of 1600, razer deathadder is the only mouse i know of who performs different ( more dpi = higher max perfect control speed )
 
I game at 1920x1200 and I don't hit 2000 DPI. I snipe around 8-900 DPI, and for everything else 1200-1400 DPI. The new 3000 DPI mice are overkill.
 
I never really understood the super high DPI marketing.

My mouse goes up to 2500dpi via button on the mouse.
600-800-1200-1600-2000-2500DPI

It is always on 800 dpi. I find it perfect for precision shots.

I have had a g5 that broke on my after a few months. Lame. Last time I ever spend that much money on a mouse again.

This X-750BF is the best mouse I have ever had and it was only $30.
image001.jpg


Review: http://www.reviewdesk.com/a4tech-x-750bf-3xfire-laser-game-mouse/
 
I've been using optical for ages along with trackball ones. I've tried laser mouses and hated the feeling. The acceleration or something was always off compared to the feel of a optical. For me it felt so artificial and really inaccurate. Thats just what i think mainly ;). Just staying with my microsoft optical mouse for now. I'm probably just use to lower dpi mouses.
 
Ron FTL said:
I never really understood the super high DPI marketing.

My mouse goes up to 2500dpi via button on the mouse.
600-800-1200-1600-2000-2500DPI

It is always on 800 dpi. I find it perfect for precision shots.

I have had a g5 that broke on my after a few months. Lame. Last time I ever spend that much money on a mouse again.

This X-750BF is the best mouse I have ever had and it was only $30.
image001.jpg


Review: http://www.reviewdesk.com/a4tech-x-750bf-3xfire-laser-game-mouse/
Click to expand...

I've had the same mouse, and while i agree it's pretty well designed, i still don't think it's even worth $30.00. There's no noticeable difference in performance from my $10.00 mouse. Makes me wonder just what makes the $80.00 ones so special.

I use the claw grip, so DPI is a pretty big issue for me. I can honestly say that a i high DPI will let a claw griper snipe. The grip is all about precision. But considering the resolutions even standard mice come in these days.

Other snipers i've played with use the palm grip. They make good snipers but if they were to run into a close combat guy, they're dead. Claw grip + high dpi means you can switch between sniping and cqb. But like i said, todays standard mice is considered high end just a few years ago, so the whole argument is moot.
 
This discussion is making more more confuse about what exactly does DPI do.

DPI stands for Dots Per Inch, from what I know it's how many units the senor picks up for a inch of mouse movement. So lowering the DPI should theoretically makes the senor pick up less movements, in other words, lower the precision of the mouse at same windows sensitivity. If the above is true, a 5000dpi mouse set at 5000dpi and low windows sensitivity should be more precise than the same mouse at 1000dpi at high sensitivity regardless of the size of the monitor. That way, high dpi mic do have advantage over low dpi mice in term of accuracy... right?
 
@exe163
First, you have to understand the relationship between DPI and Sensitivity.

DPI you already know, a 2,000 DPI mouse when moved 1 inch to the right will tell the PC that it has moved 2,000 units.

Sensitivity is the multiplier on how the PC interprets those units.



For simplicity's sake, lets pretend you have a bitmap that's 360 pixels high and 360 pixels wide. You also have a Mouse that's 360DPI.

With Sensitivity set to 1, every time the mouse tells the PC that the mouse has moved 1 unit left, the software moves the mouse approximately 1 pixel left.

With sensitivity set to 2, that means when you move your mouse 1 unit left, the cursor moves 2 pixels left.

How does this relate to gaming? Well, if you have a 360 DPI mouse and the game set at MouseSensitivity 1.0, that means each time the mouse is moved 1 unit, the game rotates your character 1 degree. If the enemy in the distance was positioned 1.5 degrees from your position (Note the pic i posted above, it doesn't even line up with the pillars), no matter what you do, your crosshair isn't gonna line up properly with his head. This is what happened to me a lot back when i was playing CounterStrike Beta with a ball mouse.

However, if you lower the Mouse sensitivity to 0.5, your crosshair will move in half degree increments and will now be able to line up with his head. The downside is that your 360DPI mouse now feels like it's 180 DPI since you now have to move it twice as far to make a 360 degree turn. The solution is to get a mouse that is 720DPI.

The rest just snowballs from there. A 2,000DPI mouse has to be set at 0.18 to maintain a full 360 degree rotation in 1 inch. A 5,000 DPI mouse has to be set to 0.072 to be able to do the same. Honestly, i don't see why you would need that level of precision.


On the desktop, a sensitivity of 1.0 means your cursor would be flying all over your 1680x1050 monitor when you're barely moving the 5,000 DPI mouse.

(NOTE: This is a simplification, actual formula used by game may vary especially if you take mouse acceleration into account. If i was making a 3D game, i'd be using radians but degrees is easier to explain).
 
Last edited:
Sly said:
@exe163
First, you have to understand the relationship between DPI and Sensitivity.

DPI you already know, a 2,000 DPI mouse when moved 1 inch to the right will tell the PC that it has moved 2,000 units.

Sensitivity is the multiplier on how the PC interprets those units.



For simplicity's sake, lets pretend you have a bitmap that's 360 pixels high and 360 pixels wide. You also have a Mouse that's 360DPI.

With Sensitivity set to 1, every time the mouse tells the PC that the mouse has moved 1 unit left, the software moves the mouse approximately 1 pixel left.

With sensitivity set to 2, that means when you move your mouse 1 unit left, the cursor moves 2 pixels left.

How does this relate to gaming? Well, if you have a 360 DPI mouse and the game set at MouseSensitivity 1.0, that means each time the mouse is moved 1 unit, the game rotates your character 1 degree. If the enemy in the distance was positioned 1.5 degrees from your position (Note the pic i posted above, it doesn't even line up with the pillars), no matter what you do, your crosshair isn't gonna line up properly with his head. This is what happened to me a lot back when i was playing CounterStrike Beta with a ball mouse.

However, if you lower the Mouse sensitivity to 0.5, your crosshair will move in half degree increments and will now be able to line up with his head. The downside is that your 360DPI mouse now feels like it's 180 DPI since you now have to move it twice as far to make a 360 degree turn. The solution is to get a mouse that is 720DPI.

The rest just snowballs from there. A 2,000DPI mouse has to be set at 0.18 to maintain a full 360 degree rotation in 1 inch. A 5,000 DPI mouse has to be set to 0.072 to be able to do the same. Honestly, i don't see why you would need that level of precision.


On the desktop, a sensitivity of 1.0 means your cursor would be flying all over your 1680x1050 monitor when you're barely moving the 5,000 DPI mouse.

(NOTE: This is a simplification, actual formula used by game may vary especially if you take mouse acceleration into account. If i was making a 3D game, i'd be using radians but degrees is easier to explain).
Click to expand...

Well put, sure helped me out. I will mess around with settings when I get my G9, or when my G5 gets back from RMA
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top