Slashdot Mirror
Gaming Mice Get Benchmarked
Via Joystiq, an article at the ES Reality site where they do their level best to benchmark mice in a logical fashion. Post author Sujoy explains: "In this environment where performance is king, it's ludicrous to think that mouse performance has never been measured for reviewing the products. Imagine reviewing the latest graphics card in the same way. Without benchmarks, reviewers would have to resort to loading up their favourite game and commenting on how their frag count improved. You would have no way to compare NVIDIA and ATI cards apart from the quality of the packaging. Without benchmarking, graphics card reviews would be almost entirely useless. So why do we put up with mouse reviews that are just as useless?" They have scales based on control, speed, and DPI to determine how good, really, that mouse is.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/ 11/1427242
http://harridanic.com
Did this article REALLY need to be split into 22 impres err I mean pages?
Good-bye
"You would have no way to compare NVIDIA and ATI cards apart from the quality of the packaging."
So I guess things like pixel pipelines have nothing to do with performance, according this this guy.
"You would have no way to compare NVIDIA and ATI cards apart from the quality of the packaging."
I am offtopic here, but I think this raises an interesting question. Do we really need the latest/best hardware? We need special programs just to make a difference between different graphic cards (or mice for that matter), so why should anyone pay more for a card if he's never going to see the difference between it and a cheaper model in real life apps. Benchmarks are mainly a marketing tool nowadays.
Surely mouse preference is subjective ?
Graphics cards have a small defined set of criteria that they are judged against. If a graphics card is faster than any other, with higher refreshes, and higher resolution, then for 99.9% of users it is percieved the best.
Mice however, require the user to be comfortable holding them, with the correct mousepad, with or without a wrist rest, and then there's wireless vs wired, bluetooth vs infra-red, trackball or optical. Some users swear by a simple 3 button scroll wheeled mouse, some users can't function without all those extra buttons on the sides. A high DPI is one thing, but for some that just makes the mouse TOO twitchy. Gaming is not ALL about twitch speeds, and frag counts. There are many games out there, where a slower moving mouse with higher accuracy is actually benificial (most of the God Sims, spring to mind).
At the end of the day, there are different mouses for different houses. What works for you, probably doesn't work for your neighbour. As such most mouse reviews have limited value, with or without benchmarks.
-Jar.
[Logitech MX510, on a kidney shaped plastic grooved mousepad - both at work and at home]
Together, We Can Make Slashdot Better. I Do NOT Mod ACs. - Check Me Out
Not long ago, I bought one. I don't care what the benchmarks say, I thought it was an utterly terrible mouse. It had a really bad feel to it (probably because it's ambidextrous), the mousewheel was hard to use when your hands were sweaty, and for some mysterious reason the mouse started to malfunction when I used it on the right side of my mousepad, but worked properly on the left. Pretty interesting considering that the entire surface is perfectly uniform! I also recall that the mouse had about three separate sensitivity settings for it, not to mention whatever sensitivity settings you have in your game. I eventually uninstalled the mouse software because it was just making things more difficult.
A total waste of money. I resumed using my old Logitech MX510.
I like to think I do an extensive amount of research prior to any hardware purchase, and have always had an issue with mice reviews as it is described in the article as it all seems to be arbitrary. Therefore I tend to option for reviews from Neweggers to determine what a good mouse is. In the drafting of the Christmas wish list I chose the Logitech G5 as the choice mouse this holiday season. Apparently 677 Neweggers can be wrong.
Interesting article even tho mouse preference is highly subjective (you have to be comfortable using the mouse...).
One thing I learned from all this : Laser mice aren't better than optical ones.
I didn't found something funny to put here.
I genuinely thought that the headline read "benchmarking gaming dice". I was really looking forward to geeking out on twenty-two pages of twenty-four-sided goodness.
To spot a dupe.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
d24? Who even uses these things?
-
These are, by far, the best performing mice out there.
There are many tongues to talk, and but few heads to think. -Victor Hugo
Did anyone else think they were talking about actual animal mice? Grading their performance in, I don't know, tests or something?
The emphasis on "perfect control" is silly. Users should not need to move their mouse fast enough to the point where these perfect control numbers matter. The more important measurements are sample rate and DPI. The higher, the better for both, as it makes mouse movement smoother since the mouse updates come in faster and they don't need to be enlarged as much, which reduces "laggy" and "jaggy" mouse movement. This means that the Fatal1ty 2020 mouse is the current best, assuming the ergonomic aspects are to your liking.
Accuracy, and not just at high speeds, but just regular, slow tracking, because almost every optical/laser mouse I've used had a problem. Track is slowly across the screen and watch the cursor jitter up and down, sometimes hopping backward a little. It seems all of the ubercool mice do this, so I'd like to know of one that doesn't, because I'd buy it right off.
True, Trackballs are not mice. But when you take into the acount the benefits of a trackball (NOT Thumbballs) you see that they are far superior. Trackballs are safer and more accurate. I hate it when I have the mouse in the right position and it moves when I click the button. That problem does not occur with a trackball. Also, you never get to the edge of a mouse pad or out of range of your arm. There's nothing more archaic about the mouse than having to pick up the entire pointing device to replace it somewhere else to move it again. It is faster just to move your hand. I remeber watching some video game tournaments watching everyone constantly picking up thier mice while playing - what a waste of energy an time. I realize that most people don't know about trackballs becasue their computers came with mice, but that is just a sad case. DeFKnoL, Loving my Kensington!
I would love to see benchmark like these for cell phone handset reception. Now days there is no way to tell if your cell phone is crapy or just your network.
It would have been nice if he actually played FPS's with them over the period of weeks and months and tabulated changes in his frags vs. deaths... I believe UT2004 would have been excellent game for this due to built in statistical tracking.