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.

Comments

Dupe

[shabble]

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/ 11/1427242

Surely...

[Jaruzel]

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]

Re:Surely...

[kinglink]

Of course it's subjective. How you hold the mouse, how you move it, that's all up to you.

What this is doing though is it's taking the non subjective parts of the mouse. the DPI, the sensativity, the "malfunction speed". Basically the important information that can be measured and analysis that.

Now if you want a cordless or a corded mouse you'll knock a bunch of the top 10 off right there, but on the other hand out of those remaining you'll have an idea what to look for. Who cares if a mouse feels right if the mouse next to it feels a little worse but has a better sensativitiy and won't crap out on you.

Logitech G5

[KiWiKiD]

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.

Re:No way to compare?

[StCredZero]

They do. But unless you can actually benchmark, then you have no way of knowing how these affect overall performance. Like, what if you had tons of pipelines, but rather poor bandwidth to video RAM?

Also, how would you accurately predict what is "enough" in terms of performance for variious stats? How would you accurately calculate price/performance? And -- as demonstrated, if you read the fine article -- what's to keep manufacturers from lying/making honest mistakes? (Or marketing departments from inflating certain numbers for testosterone/marketing value even though the values are beyond what is useful anyways?)

Sorry, try again?