As a fervent PC gamer you want to get the most out of the hardware you’ve purchased. However, not every piece of equipment you buy is quite optimally configured out of the box. Sometimes a bit of tweaking can go a long way to improving your performance in games. Particularly if you’re into competitive play in games such as Quake Live.
For that reason I wrote this article a while ago, during the FiringSquad Editor’s Challenge (ranked in 4th). This is a retooled version of the same article, which focuses on the Logitech G5 mouse, because that was the mouse I was using at the time. The article is useful for owners of more recent mice as well.
The Logitech G5 is a laser mouse that is being marketed as a truly essential tool for gaming. But in spite of the marketing claims extensive tests have proven that its performance, when compared to some of the better optical gaming mice, leaves something to be desired. The G5 is know not to like a number of surfaces and it’s known to respond inaccurately when moving at high speeds.
Fortunately this does not necessarily mean you’ve lucked out if you’ve bought this mouse.
The Logitech G5 Laser Mouse
History
I decided to purchase my very first Logitech mouse, the G5, after my Razer Diamondback broke. Initially the G5’s performance seemed only a marginally worse than my Diamondback, but I was willing to trade in some accuracy for a more comfortable and customizable mouse. My Razer Diamondback was yet another one of those tiny, standard gaming mice. But this G5 offered the ability to change it’s weight on the fly, as well as a completely ergonomic design which provided a much more comfortable gaming experience than a completely symmetric mouse.
And yet I was still somewhat disappointed with my new mouse. My accuracy had deteriorated slightly in comparison to when I was still playing with my Razer Diamondback and it wasn’t showing any signs of improving at all. Additionally the G5 was reported to be slightly inaccurate and sloppy due to its laser technology, resulting in many optical mice outperforming it. It got to the point where I was considering changing to the new Razer DeathAdder, but then… I found a way to tweak my Logitech G5 to new heights!
Small steps
The first thing I discovered which significantly improved my Logitech G5’s accuracy was flipping over my Steelpad 4D mouse pad. Apparently the G5 prefers smooth surfaces, rather than rough surfaces - which are Razers forte. The G5 gaming experience immediately changed for the better after using my Steelpad with the smooth side up, but it still wasn’t quite the sublime gaming mouse it was marketed to be.
Updating its firmware to version 1.2 improved the G5’s tracking immediately. This is particularly helpful if you’re playing on a rough surface, but also helps stabilize the mouse on smoother surfaces. Naturally cleaning the sensor is another quick way of getting your G5 up to speed, because it does tend to clog up with dust after a while.
The final small tweak I managed to uncover was swapping the weights around. It turns out that the mouse was naturally out-of-balance, which could be corrected by a proper weight setup. I opted for this setup for my own optimal balance: three 1.7g weights on the left, two on the right (upper and lower slots) and one 4.7g in the center upper slot. Of course this kind of weight setup largely comes down to personal preference – and many of you might find it to be a bit on the heavy side.
The Revelation
And then, amongst the other download links on the Logitech website, I found their very own mouse driver & tweaking tool: SetPoint. This ordinarily wouldn’t have been too important a discovery, if it weren’t for the fact that SetPoint allows you to alter the polling rates for your mouse’s USB port beyond the Windows-enforced limit of 125Hz. What this does is allow your mouse to report more data to your computer, resulting in a smoother and more accurate response.
The Windows-enforced standard of 125Hz gives a standard response time (lag) of 8ms, but setting your polling rate at 250Hz reduces this to 4ms. SetPoint allows you to set polling rates as high as 1000Hz, at the expense of some resource utilization. At 1000Hz your response time will have been reduced to a mere 1ms, which should provide a notable advantage in any competitive gaming environment. The difference between 125Hz and 1000Hz is immediately noticeable, as the mouse becomes noticeably more responsive.
So now to back up my claims. If these polling rates really have an effect on your gaming performance, then you should be able to test that sort of thing, right? That’s where Unreal Tournament 2004 Team Arena Master enters the picture. I’ve played various matches of UT2004 TAM utilizing different polling rates (500Hz and 1000Hz) in order to try and prove the effect of this tweaking on a player’s accuracy.
Results of one of the matches played during testing
Why UT2004 TAM?
I chose Unreal Tournament 2004 Team Arena Master for this benchmark because it’s a highly aim-dependent game. Your performance very directly relates to your accuracy and timely response to situations, which largely depends on the performance of your mouse. Additionally I happen to be a highly experienced UT2004 player, my Xfire account should attest to that, which means my in-game performance should be relatively stable.
Another reason for choosing TAM is because it offers amazingly detailed statistics for player accuracy with each weapon after every map. Not to mention the fact that it allows players to use every weapon in the game from the get-go, so the entire focus is on killing the enemy, rather than also having to pick up weapons or health packs. Testing conditions can’t get much better than that!
The Setup
I set my G5 to it’s maximum setting of 2000 DPI and defaulted all driver settings, except speed and acceleration which I let SetPoint handle. My in-game settings remained exactly the same throughout the tests (0.88 sensitivity, 1600×1200 resolution, no mouse smoothing, sound levels equal, etc.), my Steelpad hadn’t moved an inch and I even used the exact same background music during play. I also regularly switched teams inbetween maps, in order to eliminate the possible effect on my accuracy of being on the winning, or losing, team.
I spread my gaming sessions out over multiple days in an attempt to remove further external factors. Doing the entire thing in one go would likely have resulted in either poor performance due to fatigue, or the exact opposite: better performance due to the previous matches functioning as warm up rounds of sorts.
To this end I played three matches with a polling rate of 500Hz one day and three matches with a polling rate of 1000Hz the next day. I then gathered my accuracy statistics from screenshots I took at the end of every map. These statistics were then compiled into the graphs you can see spread across this article.
System Specifications:
- AMD Athlon64 3200+
- ASUS K8V SE DX
- ATi X800 Pro
- 2048 MB RAM
- Steelpad 4D
- Logitech G5 Laser Mouse
This is the average accuracy per weapon, per poll rate, across all maps
Understanding the Results
The test results show a clear difference between polling rates of 500Hz and 1000Hz. Accuracy with nearly every weapon increased after polling up to 1000Hz, with especially the Shock Combo (28% to 51%) and Rocket Launcher (24% to 43%) measuring a massive difference in accuracy. On the other end of the spectrum, weapons like the Shock Rifle’s secondary fire (11% to 10%) and Flak Cannon’s primary fire (11% to 10%) showed almost no difference between the polling rates.
Some weapons were excluded because they are rarely used, such as the Assault Rifle, Bio Rifle & Shield Gun. Other weapons were excluded because they’re normally used as a deterrent, rather than something to hit people with, such as the link gun and minigun. However two such weapons did make it to my list. The under-used Shock Rifle’s secondary fire, which lacks any use other than for Shock Combo’s – and a deterrent: the Flak Cannon’s primary fire.
Why did they make it to this list? Because they are good examples of weapons that do not see any benefit from increased polling rates or accuracy. A weapon that is used to spam will not benefit from better response times or more accurate readings – it will still spam just as well as it used to. Take this into account when you decide whether you want to change your polling rates. A more spam-heavy play style will result in decreased improvements from increasing poll rates.
This was my performance at 500Hz
Results Continued
The most important weapons in these statistics are the Lighting Gun and Shock Rifle’s primary fire. These are by far the most used weapons in the list and are also most representative of a change in accuracy due to their instant-hit nature. Interestingly, both of these weapons not only noted a significant increase in accuracy, but also in terms of consistency, when the G5 was polled at 1000Hz.
Another important weapon in the list is the Shock Combo, which relies on fast and accurate movements to combine two shots (shock secondary and primary) to deadly effect. It becomes a lot easier to pull of shock combo’s on a more responsive mouse and this shows in the results. Accuracy increased by a whopping 23% at 1000Hz.
The Rocket Launcher and Flak Cannon secondary fire are slightly less important, because they are projectile-based. These weapons rely more on prediction than pure aim – but this also means they can notice a significant shift in accuracy due to a more responsive mouse. Tweaking polling rates to higher settings decreases the amount of response time you have to deal with, which can make the difference between flicking your mouse far enough for an accurate rocket or just a tad short and missing your target by miles. This also shows in the statistics, with both weapons noting increases in accuracy (19% rocket and 2% flak).
The graphs that display the results for each map at different polling rates are also interesting, because they very clearly show a consistency difference between the two settings. At 500Hz the charts are all over the place, whereas at 1000Hz they are more or less the same over several maps. Consistency is a very important factor for any skilled FPS player. It doesn’t matter if you can hit 50% lighting gun accuracy in one match out of every two hundred, what you want is a consistently high accuracy – and a higher polling rate appears to help realize this.
1000Hz clearly improved both my accuracy and consistency
Notes on Polling Rates
There are other applications that can change your polling rate if you have a different mouse, but only SetPoint appears to work with the Logitech G5. After seeing the results you might think that the highest possible polling rate must be the best choice, but that is not always true. Higher polling rates increase resource utilization, which could lead to a noticeable drop in your framerate. Granted, I have yet to see such a drop in any game I play, but it might be different on your system.
An additional concern when increasing your polling rate is that it essentially overclocks your USB port. In the case of SetPoint this is temporary: it only functions as long as your mouse is plugged in. But other programs or tweaks are usually more permanent solutions. An overclocked USB port is not good for your electronic equipment like MP3 players or digital camera’s, they can be damaged!
So make certain you reserve one specific USB port for your mouse if you’re going to do this. It’s also not a good idea to set the polling rate to 1000Hz for just any mouse, some older mice might not be able to handle such high polling rates and will be damaged in similar fashion to your MP3 player. Reserve it for a mouse you know can handle it, like the G5 or more recent gaming mice.
Concluding
And so we’ve come to an end on this topic. The tips mentioned in this article aught to help you get your G5 into shape and allow it to take your aim to unforeseen heights. Rather than being just another average gaming mouse the G5 proves it can transform into a bringer of virtual death, with just a few simple tweaks and downloads.
While it might still not be up-to-par with a 1000Hz polled Razer DeathAdder, it can certainly be made into a lean and mean killing machine when setup properly. And that is precisely what I intended to do with this article. (You can find my original version of this article here)
If you want to buy a new mouse, then the Logitech G5 is not your best choice. You’d most certainly be better served with a newer mouse like the Razer DeathAdder or Mamba (not the Lachesis). Note that Razer mouse drivers support increased polling rates as well.
Good luck – and see you in-game!
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