How to tell what DPI mouse is using (switchable)?

[hans030390]

This is a pretty simple question. I recently purchased a Gigabyte GM-M6800 mouse, and it seems pretty good. It has a DPI switcher (800/1600), but it gives me no info as to what setting it's currently on. There's definitely a difference...one setting makes the mouse "faster" than the other. Is the faster setting the higher or lower DPI setting?

 

[ChaoZ]

Higher dpi = faster

 

[Rifter]

faster movement is higher dpi man, should be super simple to figure out.

 

[hans030390]

faster movement is higher dpi man, should be super simple to figure out.

That's what I had figured, but I wanted to double check.

 

[Rifter]

yeah it only gets hard when you have a mouse like mine thats adjustable in 125DPI increments up to 4000, then its damn near impossible to tell what DPI you are at. Now that you mention it im going to see if there is a program i can find that will tell me im curious now.

 

[Ika]

yeah it only gets hard when you have a mouse like mine thats adjustable in 125DPI increments up to 4000, then its damn near impossible to tell what DPI you are at. Now that you mention it im going to see if there is a program i can find that will tell me im curious now.

Out of curiosity, what mouse are you using?

My G5 has a series of three lights and five different settings (programmable in uberOptions, probably also programmable in vanilla setpoint). the lights show me what DPI setting I'm at. I feel like it would be a bad idea to have switchable DPI on-the-fly without some sort of indicator...

 

[Rifter]

Razer Lachesis

I love it, i got it 3 weeks ago and you can pry it out of my cold dead hands

Im a pretty hardcore FPS gamer and this is the best mouse i have ever used. And i've used damn near everything over the years. As long as you lower the DPI for desktop work it is great, and i love being able to adjust DPI on the fly for when you are zoomed in with a scope to line up the perfect shot.

 

[Ika]

and i love being able to adjust DPI on the fly for when you are zoomed in with a scope to line up the perfect shot.

I've always thought if you need to adjust your sensitivity when sniping you need better aim and aren't good enough to play competitively

 

[Rifter]

lmao thats one way to look at it, but you try aiming a sniper rifle at 4000dpi in most games and see how that works out for you.

 

[Ika]

lmao thats one way to look at it, but you try aiming a sniper rifle at 4000dpi in most games and see how that works out for you.

That's why I play at 800dpi I also personally think high DPI is a marketing scam anyway. I barely use a third of my mousepad as it is. For reference, I play CS:S competitively (CAL-m level) using 3.0 in-game sensitivity and default Windows sensitivity. My accuracy is near pinpoint perfect, but I have the mouse speed to do a 270º spin and headshot in a split second.

as a side note I never have to change my DPI unless the game has terrible terrible mouse settings (like Mass Effect, Bioshock, and several other UT3-engine games).

 

[Rifter]

Yeah UT3 is HORRIBLE, i still think UT99 is the best out of the unreal series i still play it. And i usualy dont play over 2000dpi but it depends, i always move the in game mouse speed/sensitivity to zero resulting in me needing to crank up the DPI i find this is smoother than running a lower DPI with the in game sensativity raised up.

 

[Modelworks]

The higher dpi is faster.

The mouse I use is the MS sidewinder and it lets you switch between 3 dpi settings that you assign to the buttons. It also lets you assign a 4th mouse button by the thumb to precision mode which will drop something like 2000dpi down to 200dpi for as long as you hold the button down or you can set it to toggle.

The other feature it has that I feel is somewhat a cheat is quick turn where with a button press it will turn your character 180 degrees.

 

[kalrith]

I'd just leave it on 1600 all the time. I recently bought an Alienware TactX mouse (basically a Logitech G9x clone), and the DPI goes up to 4k or 5k. 2k feels about right to me, but I'm sure I'll experiment with higher settings at some point.

 

[Modelworks]

Surface you use it on has a huge impact as well. The higher dpi mouse are often advertised as working even on clear glass which is something that requires a high dpi. The reason higher dpi is required is the laser reflects off the glass and creates the image, in glass the reflection scatters and the details returned are very few so you need every dot you can get to compare and calculate the movement.

On something like a completely pure white surface it is also very difficult for lower dpi. You really want a pattern under the mouse that is as complicated and different from millimeter to millimeter as possible . Then anything from 600dpi and up works fine.