Mouse problem ??

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Hey,

I hope somebody here can help, I'm really out of ideas now.

So I have a Logitech G5 laser mouse and an old Logitech MX300. I've been using the G5 up until recently when I decided to use lower sensitivity in Quake but the G5 would spin with the fast movements, so I decided to go back to my MX300...

Within a pretty short amount of time I noticed that while using the MX300 I would randomely suffer some form of performance drop in my screen/display. In Quake I'm playing on 125fps SOLID and 120hz on a CRT monitor. The performance drop would feel similar to something to my fps dropping to 60 or the hz dropping, only they're not.

For e.g. if I'm walking round and round an object, it's updating flawlessly and feels smooth and looks solid. The next minute my update will go all funny and the corners will flicker into place, like low fps.

The issue is only noticable when moving the mouse however, e.g. if I trace the block or move the mouse at all, If I leave the mouse still the update is perfect.

The G5 doesn't suffer from this issue so I thought the mouse was broken/damaged and decided to buy the closest replacement, the G1. The G1 and MX300 are both optical while the G5 is laser. So I'm thinking it has something to do with that.. ?

I've tried the Logitech drivers and Windows drivers, I've removed my overclock and set factory default and I've updated my graphics card drivers (8800gt) and still no change.

I've also tried swapping USB ports, tried using PS2 adapter, changing mouse mat and using white paper.

Can anyone help?

Thanks in advance

Dave

 

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Have you tried the mouse settings in control panel?

 

Ehm,

There's not a lot in the mouse settings area in control panel so I'm not sure which part you mean?

 

go to the pointer options in the mouse settings and see if changing the settings help, you could also try updating the driver (make a restore point first though).

 

If you're talking about the first ever Quake game then this is not surprising. Modern high-end mice have very high sensitivites (like up to 2000 dpi the last time I looked), which the mouse input buffers in old games were not designed to handle.

In a game you have what is called the input buffer which is memory assigned to queuing things like keyboard and mouse inputs, since such events are not immediately processed because I/O has to share its time slot in the game loop with graphics, audio, AI, etc. updates. Because modern mice far exceed what used to be acceptable (800 dpi) once the mouse I/O buffer is full, you will notice that input from the mouse is lost - hence the stuttering game performance after a while as the lost input cannot be retrieved, so the game has no idea that input was received and just sits there whilst the existing input data in the buffer is cleared and new data is received.

To play old games always use an older mouse.

 

Thanks Matt, that's probably the closest explanation I can think of.

However, after over a week of trying to figure it out, I think I've fixed it.

The MX300 is an old 400DPI mouse while the G1 is 800DPI and the G5 is 400/800/2000.

In regards to this queue buffer, I think there's maybe some setting like com_hunkmegs/com_zonemegs or something within the Quake 3 config which I might have increased and made the lower DPI not as good? Though it's actually a friends config, so that would be weird, actually, as he uses the MX300 without any problems.

Anyway, I was trying to figure out why the G5 was so smooth and working perfectly by trying to find out what differences between the specs the mice had.

G5 "apparently" has a 1000mhz USB report rate but only runs at 500mhz.
G1/MX300 have the standard 125mhz.

I've run a form of overclock to make the MX300/G1 run at 500mhz, which they can handle, and the whole issue seems to be resolved - they're even much smoother on the desktop!

Edit: the only odd thing is that I've no idea why I needed to overclock my USB/mice to make them work properly. Hmm.

 

I/O buffers are usually of a fixed size within the game code, so changing hunkmegs or zonemegs (you brought back some memories there mate! ) won't make a difference.

Glad you resolved the issue.

 

A very unlikely explanation could be buffer underflow, whereby your system is able to process the I/O queue faster than the mouse is able to fill it at its stock frequency. Like I said, i'd be surprised if this were the case!

 

These would affect the desktop settings and not those of the game - this is the reason why you can change mouse speeds in-game without it affecting your desktop experience.

 

Yea, that's kinda what I was getting at. I don't understand it. But then it might be something.. you could argue that the flickery updating was because it was stepping ahead and missing some parts out in order to update without some kind of lag from the mouse? I wouldn't have thought so though. 400DPI/125mhz mice were always enough for a 125fps performance in Quake 3..

 

I doubt this as well but it COULD be that my system is a lot faster than the days I used to use the lower speed mice.

 

I think I'm going to stick with this explanation. Though it may be unlikely, I'm unable to find anything else which may have caused the issue. Now the mice are running at 500mhz poll rate the issue has gone.

A lot of mice are now being released with their own hardware/software settings set to run at higher poll rates than 125mhz. Perhaps this is not only to try and improve mouse performance but to keep mice up to par with the rest of todays hardware?

For anyone interested in the USB mouse polling speeds: http://www.overclock.net/faqs/73418-how-improve-mouse-response-accuracy-changing.html

 

Wow! I've got to say that I'm suirprised by this, but glad you've got it working. This causes me to believe that there is a hardware design flaw or driver issue with the mouse (that is assuming that it isn't faulty!).

They're just taking advantage of the extra processing power available in later hardware. It's a case of mice keeping up rather than other hardware keeping up with mice.

Nice link! Thanks!

 

Well, I wouldn't have thought the fault was on the mouse side, more likely it's something PC side. The Logitech MX300 mice have always been excellent performers and mine has been for years. I did think it was a mouse flaw at first but there's no way a brand new G1 is faulty as well. Driver wise I tried Logitech drivers and windows drivers. The fact that the G5 has been fine the whole time and runs on 500mhz default, which speed fixed my other mice, I'm sure it's a PC problem and not a mouse problem.