Are you looking to take your aim to the next level? One sometimes overlooked aspect of optimising your setup is enhancing your mouse performance. In this blog post, we will explore some key strategies to help you get the most out of your mouse.
Let's start with the basics!
1. Windows Settings
Ensuring you have the best windows mouse settings is incredibly important when it comes to building consistent aim.
First, open your windows mouse settings and then open your 'Additional mouse settings' window.
Navigate to the 'Pointer Options' tab.
Set pointer speed at the 6th notch on the scale out of 11 (the middle of the scale).
Finally, untick 'Enhanced pointer precision' (also known as mouse acceleration). This is important for building consistent aim, with Enhanced pointer precision on, your mouse sensitivity will change depending on how quickly you move your mouse. This is generally not recommended because it results in a different amount of cursor movement for the same amount of mouse movement depending on speed.
2. Adjust DPI Settings
DPI - dots per inch, (also known as CPI, counts per inch) determines how sensitive your mouse feels to movement. A higher DPI setting allows for more cursor movement over the same distance than a lower DPI. An often overlooked factor is the effect that DPI has on sensor input latency.
Higher DPI settings can reduce sensor input latency up to a certain point. However, the higher the DPI, the smaller the decrease in latency. Several factors influence mouse input latency, including polling rate, DPI, and movement speed. The sweet spot is often considered to be 1600 DPI to ensure full saturation of high polling rate mice even during slow mouse movements.
If you find 1600 DPI too fast or too slow, try using a sensitivity calculator and adjust your in-game sensitivity to match your old sensitivity with your new DPI.
Remember that everyone will have different preferences, so experiment with different DPI settings and find what feels best for you.
For more detailed exploration of this topic, check out this informative video by Optimum Tech diving deep and conducting testing with interesting results.
3. Adjust Polling Rate
The polling rate of your mouse determines how often it reports its position to your computer. Higher polling rates (e.g. 4000Hz, 8000Hz) provide more frequent updates, leading to smoother and more responsive cursor movement during gameplay but can come at the cost of CPU resources and battery life (if using a wireless mouse).
- Check your current settings: Most gaming mice default to 1000Hz polling rates out of the box.
- Experiment: Try different rates (e.g. 1000Hz, 2000Hz, 4000Hz) to find the optimal balance of responsiveness, CPU usage and battery life.
- Monitor Performance: Check CPU usage with different polling rates and choose the rate that offers smooth performance without excessive resource consumption. Bear in mind that CPU usage will be highest when the mouse is moving quickly and the polling rate is fully saturated.
By optimising the polling rate of your gaming mouse, you can enhance its responsiveness and tailor its performance to suit your needs and PC specifications, but be conscious of balancing mouse performance with CPU load and battery life when using higher polling rates.
4. General Mouse Settings
Here we'll go over some general settings you may find in your mouse software. We're using our OP1 8K for this demo which has excellent customisability.
LOD - Lift off distance
Lift off distance is the distance off the mouse pad the mouse needs to be to stop tracking. Setting this to a low setting allows quicker and more accurate repositioning of the mouse on the pad. Higher values mean that your mouse will continue to track as you lift it up and start tracking as you put it down. Typically, it's best to set LOD to the lowest setting possible unless you experience tracking issues.
Angle snapping
Angle snapping is a function that helps keep your mouse movements on one axis, either X or Y. This setting can be used if you want to create straighter lines with your mouse movements. However, this means your cursor movement is not 1:1 with mouse movement. This setting is not recommended but could be useful when playing tactical shooters where you want to keep your mouse at head level during flicks.
X/Y Settings
X/Y Settings allow you to change the sensitivity or DPI for X and Y axis movements individually. Some aimers may prefer to have lower Y axis sensitivity to help keep their crosshair stable during flicks in tactical FPS. This is not generally recommended but it's certainly something to experiment with if you're curious and is primarily personal preference.
Ripple Control
Ripple control is used for reducing ripple and jitter at very high DPI settings. If you're following this guide, you shouldn't need to use this setting. Generally speaking, because your mouse movements are not 1:1 when using this setting, it is not recommended.
Motion Sync
Motion Sync could justify a whole article by itself but we'll try to give a brief explanation here. Motion sync syncs polling events with sensor data. You can think of this in the same way that G-Sync or Free-Sync synchronise your GPU and monitor, Motion Sync synchronises your sensor data with your PC. This syncing typically comes at the cost of around 1ms of input delay.
Slamclick filter
Slamclick filter is designed to stop accidental mouse clicks during fast and aggressive mouse movements. This is generally not required unless you notice unintended clicks when moving your mouse aggressively.
5. RawAccel
RawAccel is a 3rd party program that allows you to adjust the way your mouse responds to input. There are a few uses for RawAccel but we're going to focus on the 'Rotation' function. Rotation does what it sounds like, it allows you to adjust the rotation of your mouse sensor. To find out if this setting will be helpful for you follow these steps. Ensuring your mouse responds to your input how you expect it to can greatly improve your aim.
- Warm up in your game of choice and make sure you're holding your mouse as you normally do.
- Open MS Paint.
- Choose the paint brush.
- Close your eyes.
- Draw horizontal lines with your mouse.
- Check to see if your lines are actually horizontal.
- If your lines are not horizontal, install RawAccel (link to GitHub here)
You can see below, the black lines are not horizontal.
Use the 'Rotation' setting to adjust your mouse rotation. First try a positive value of 0.5 and perform the paint test again. If your lines are less horizontal, try a negative value (-0.5).
Repeat the process using smaller increments until you are drawing horizontal lines with your eyes closed!
6. Clean Your Mouse Sensor
Did you know that a dirty mouse can impact performance? Dust and debris can accumulate on the sensor and affect tracking accuracy. Periodically clean your mouse sensor with 'canned air' or a Q-tip to ensure smooth operation. Be gentle if using something to wipe the sensor. Scratches on the sensor will cause issues with tracking and cannot be repaired!
Additionally, cleaning the main body of your mouse periodically ensures that your main clicks and side buttons are not compromised by an accumulation of dirt and debris.
7. Upgrade Your Mouse Feet
It's not often that people think about mouse skates, but they are an integral part of your experience and your performance. Much like the importance of good tires on a car, good mouse skates are essential. The skates of your mouse are the only part in contact with the mouse pad and therefore dictate the feel of your aim. While all stock mouse feet are serviceable, upgrading to high-quality mouse feet, such as Corepad Skatez, can enhance the smoothness, precision and consistency of your mouse movements.
Mouse skate replacement is an easy process that usually takes no more than 5 minutes.
Check out our quick video guide below.
Unlock Your Potential
By following this guide and investing in quality accessories like Corepad Skatez Mouse Feet, you can unlock the full potential of your mouse and elevate your aim with improved accuracy, speed, and consistency. Ensure you're performing at your peak with the right settings and the right equipment.