A faster 8,000Hz polling rate is only a software update away for five more Razer gaming mice
Gaming hardware specialist Razer has expanded the portfolio of its mice that can utilise its HyperPolling technology. With a simple firmware update, you'll be able to set the polling rate to anywhere between 125 and 8,000Hz, and enjoy ultra smooth mouse motion in Windows and games.
Peripherals such as keyboards and mice don't constantly tell your PC what they're doing. Instead, the operating system will routinely check the devices for any new input data and the frequency at which this is done is called the polling rate. For fast-paced games running at very high frame rates, using a low mouse polling rate can result in small microstutters in how the game interprets the inputs.
Not every game, of course, as it depends on how frequently the game's engine will cycle through an input check. But let's say that your favourite shooter does this 60 times every second or 60Hz. That's a gap of just under 17 milliseconds between each check.
The default polling rate for most wired and wireless mice that are not intended for gaming is 125Hz, which means there's a period of roughly 8 milliseconds between every polling of the mouse. This means there's always a chance that every so often a game input update won't register the very latest mouse information.
In competitive gaming, where a missed mouse click could mess up a match, the standard polling rate is just not high enough. This is why the best gaming mice typically boast 1000Hz rates, which equates to the mouse being polled every millisecond. Few, if any, games are going to be updating input information that frequently but at that polling rate, the chance of missing anything is greatly reduced.
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