Mouse polling rate or frequency rate. Which should I choose?

Question

I am setting up my Razer Naga and in the settings is the polling rate.

I can choose 125, 500 or 1000.

I use the machine for business work and for some gaming. Battlefield 3.

The default polling rate is 500 and I am wondering if it should be different.

I understand that this is how often the mouse reports movement tracking.

Answer 1

Indeed, the polling rate is essentially how often your PC "asks" the mouse for its current positional information. The higher this is, the more accurate and responsive your mouse will be. Do bear in mind however that a higher polling rate technically means higher resource use - although from personal experience I've found this to be negligible.

You should experiment with the different settings and see if you personally feel a difference; the same applies for the DPI setting on your mouse, some people prefer to move the mouse further physically - hence prefer a lower DPI setting.

Answer 2

@Turix answer is good but don’t forget that more frequency rate means that more information your computer need to handle and process :

• A weak computer could be slowed down.
• Some screen and mouse sharing software will not be able to tolerate so much information.

That’s why it’s good to have two mouse profile for video games or default usage.