Modern gaming mice now offer 4000hz and even 8000hz polling rates. The marketing is compelling. The reality is more nuanced.
What polling rate means
Polling rate = how many times per second the mouse sends a position report to your PC. At 1000hz, that's one report every 1ms. At 4000hz, one every 0.25ms.
Does it matter?
At 1000hz and 144fps, you get roughly 6-7 mouse reports per frame. The game samples mouse position once per frame, so additional reports between frames are averaged or discarded depending on the game engine.
At 240fps, you get about 4 reports per frame at 1000hz. Here higher polling can make a small difference.
Conclusion: at framerates below 240fps, 1000hz is sufficient. Above 240fps, 2000-4000hz can provide marginally smoother cursor movement.
The CPU cost
Higher polling rate = more USB interrupts per second. At 8000hz, that's 8000 interrupts/sec from the mouse alone. On older or weaker CPUs, this adds measurable CPU overhead.
If you notice higher CPU usage after switching to a high polling rate, drop back to 1000hz.
What actually matters more than polling rate
- Acceleration curve disabled (Enhance Pointer Precision off)
- Mouse smoothing disabled in-game
- Raw input enabled in-game
- SmoothMouseXCurve / SmoothMouseYCurve removed from registry
These affect every single mouse input. Polling rate is marginal by comparison.
IzanagiOP's Trajectory Pack removes the acceleration curves and sets raw input registry values. https://terweb.lt/
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