Wirehead Studios

If you're serious about gaming, you've probably already considered installing a special Linux box to achieve that famed 500 hz USB connection, for ultra smooth mousing.

If you haven't, here's the deal. Windows limits USB reading to 8 ms polls - 125 times a second - thus 125 hz. This is where the whole P/S2 vs USB thing started: P/S2 is tweakable to 200 hz polling, thus being almost twice as responsive as USB.
Until now, only Linux users (and then the users that were capable of recompiling their own kernels) were able to change the polling rate for USB.

Now, some nut cracked the WinXP limit, and Razer seems to be working on 'fixes' for other Windows versions.

Check it out here:

http://www.warleagues.com/viewnews.asp?view=45 (http://www.warleagues.com/viewnews.asp?view=45)


Since I'm still using Windows 2000 I can't use it yet, but damn this is sweet. Plus it finally should put a stop to the aforementioned P/S2vsUSB debate.

---

If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't care or think 'you cannot sense the difference' - forget it. Just keep yer trap shut and sit back down :]

I saw that a few days ago on the cpm forum  - probably will try it sometime this weekend =]

I'm glad I never went from PS/2 to USB then, since I have my polling up at 200Hz and I'm quite happy with it there.  I never knew about this little concern before now.  It's nice to know there's a fix in the works.  I'm getting quite fed up with people capping framerates of late (see my Doom 3 rant).

Hehe, fully agreed. The human ability to deal with high rates is grossly underestimated. And so is the damage done by the low refresh rates etc.

I'm forced to use USB, since otherwise my mx510 won't allow me its 800 DPI capability. I might switch to that diamondback, which is said to be able to run at 1600 DPI and 1khz USB (with drivers & tweaks).. but I'm gonna wait and see what intelligent reviewers tell me about it :]