Last Updated on December 6, 2022
When you take online gaming seriously, you search for whatever advantage you can get. Does Gaming Mouse Need USB 3.0? or response advantages over a USB 2.0 port?
What Is USB 3.0?
A more recent version of USB called USB 3.0 was unveiled in 2008. The highest data transfer rate for USB 3.0 is 5 Gbps, while the maximum data transfer rate for USB 2.0 is 480 Mbps. With speeds up to 10 times quicker than USB 2.0, it is hence faster than USB 2.0. Additionally, compared to USB 2.0, USB 3.0 uses less power and produces more power steadily.
As a result, the majority of modern gadgets, PCs, and peripherals now support USB 3.0. For instance, you probably use a USB 3.0 cable to transmit photographs from your digital camera to your computer.
Does Gaming Mouse Need USB 3.0?
No. The USB HID protocol is used with regular computer mice. Standard HID devices are polled at 125Hz since humans are incredibly slow in comparison to computers.
Gaming mice frequently contain a software interface that can make the CPU poll at a greater frequency, up to 1,000Hz. IE 1kHz.
Since USB 1.0 could only achieve 12,500 kbps and USB 2.0 runs at 480,000 kbps…
avoid putting USB3 effort into a mouse.
Polling causes the USB host to pause what it is doing in order to check on your mouse before returning to whatever the other USB devices are trying to do. If the bus is overcrowded, you could incur a significant penalty because USB is so overhead-intensive (say a USB3 bus populated with drives and a display created from a PCIe bus shared with a graphics card).
Will using USB 3.0 instead of 2.0 for a Gaming Mouse boost input speed?
No, a mouse cannot report even slightly quicker than USB 1.1.
With USB 1.1, two speeds were added. 11Mb of high speed and 1.5Mb of low speed. Any type of input device can operate at an exceptionally fast 1.5Mb low speed. That is a 1000-fold increase in speed over an active PS2 port.
The “gaming” mice from Logitech report a thousand times per second. To even reach 2/3 of the maximum low speed, you would need to have each report include more than 1000 bits of precision. Reality? The size of a mouse interrupt packet is under 100 bits. 16 bits per axis on the X, Y, and Z axes (the wheel is on the z axis), as well as framing, are used.
What is 100 kilobytes, or 100 bits times 1000 reports? Therefore, even at maximum settings, our excellent resolution gaming mice only utilize 10% of the low speed bandwidth available. The laser optics would have a finer resolution than the atoms on the surface of your mouse mat if you could fill the bandwidth of even low speed USB!
For whatever reason, performance is most definitely not the issue because Logitech’s mice report as 11Mb full speed devices! Even better, their gaming mice are listed as USB 2.0 devices in the specifications. The mice use Full Speed rather than SuperSpeed, which USB2’s SuperSpeed of 480Mbps introduced. Ah, the marketing!
You now want to know if upgrading your mouse to USB 3 can speed up its operation. If you’re the Flash, perhaps. Nah, the mouse would get burned from the friction even then.
I’ll always be amazed by gamers and their obsession with gauging imaginary and pointless numbers.
What Port Do Gaming Mice Should Use?
Any USB 1.0 or USB 2.0 port is used by gaming mice or regular mice. But why not USB 3.0, you may be asking.
Because they don’t send a lot of data, computer accessories like keyboards and mouse don’t need USB 3.0’s faster transfer rate. Even a high-end gaming mouse with built-in storage can transport no more than a few megabytes of data per second using USB 1.0.
Additionally, USB 3.0 contains a few extra ports that modern computer mice do not. Therefore, even if we wanted to, we couldn’t use a USB 3.0 port on a mouse.
What Are the Benefits of Plugging Your Gaming Mouse into a USB 3.0 Port?
Data throughput shouldn’t be a concern, in my opinion. The serial port can transport data at a maximum speed of 112.5 Kbps and is compatible with mice. USB 1.0 operates at 12 Mbps or 1.5 Mbps (slow) (fast). Both USB 2.0 and 3.0 have speeds of up to 5 Gbps.
But what about the quickness of response? Exist any studies that compare the response times of USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports?
Is this what I’m saying? Does it matter if my mouse is extremely expensive? Can my friend legitimately blame his sluggish USB port for his Dota 2 defeat?
Does it matter if the mouse is plugged into a USB 3.0 port or not?
The Answer
- Given that mice are sluggish devices (the previous PS/2 standard was based on RS232C), USB 1.0 is more than sufficient.
- In addition to the usual USB 2.0 connectors for backwards compatibility, the USB 3.0 ports additionally feature additional connectors for high-speed transfers.
- Your mouse will connect via USB 2.0 in a USB 3.0 connector unless it has this additional connector, which I doubt any mouse has.
Thus, you are entirely correct. It serves no purpose to connect a mouse to a USB 3.0 port. If the mouse reacts slowly, another process is using the CPU more efficiently than the mouse driver.
Rat voting rates need to be investigated. The amount of data being transferred can then be more accurately estimated from there. A mouse that polls the computer at 100 hertz sends data 100 times per second.
A typical mouse will send 3-byte packets that include button information as well as information about the X and Y positions. If you assume that 3 bytes are transferred every polling cycle, you may transfer 300 bytes every second.
Since the USB polling rate is set to 125Hz by default, logically 375 bytes of data are transferred per second.
This leads me to believe that USB 3.0 won’t be any more useful than USB 2.0. (or even 1.0).
What Happens If You Plug A USB 2.0 Device Into A USB 3.0 Port?
You might be curious what would happen if you connected a USB 2.0 device to a USB 3.0 device now that you are aware of why the majority of computer mice now in use use USB 2.0.
It would function perfectly. Because USB 3.0 is backwards compatible with all prior USB versions, including 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, and 3.0, any device that employs a USB connector can be connected to a USB 3.0 port.
Even if it would function, you wouldn’t be able to take advantage of USB 3.0’s faster transfer rate. That’s because, as I’ve already mentioned, USB 2.0 devices lack the particular connectors that are needed for it. Therefore, a USB 2.0 device will function when plugged into a USB 3.0 port, but it will only send data at USB 2.0 speed.
Conclusion
Data transfer rates for USB 3.0 (blue ports) are faster than those for USB 2.0. Flash drives, external hard drives, and video input devices that support USB 3.0 and need faster speeds work wonderfully with USB 3.0 ports.
It is advised to connect devices that don’t support USB 3.0 into the older USB 2.0 ports since devices like gaming keyboards and gaming mouse typically don’t transmit enough data to warrant using the higher speed. There is no danger in connecting an older device to a speedier port because USB 3.0 is backward compatible with the earlier version; nevertheless, performance won’t be improved.
