When you are serious about online gaming, you look for every edge that you can find. The question is, will plugging your mouse into a USB 3.0 port provide any speed or response benefits over a USB 2.0 port? Today’s SuperUser Q&A post debates the question.
Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites.
Photo courtesy of Jack Zalium (Flicker).
The Question
SuperUser reader philipthegreat wants to know if plugging a mouse into a USB 3.0 port will provide any speed benefits or not:
Would plugging a mouse into a USB 3.0 port make a difference or not?
Tom’s Hardware Overclock. net Logitech Forums Yahoo Answers
Intuitively, I do not think data throughput should be an issue. Mice worked fine over a serial port, and those transfer at a maximum of 112.5 Kbps. USB 1.0 runs at 1.5 Mbps (slow) or 12 Mbps (fast). USB 2.0 can handle 480 Mbps and 3.0 can reach 5 Gbps.
But what about response speed? Are there any published studies of response time between USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports?
My question is, was I right? Would it matter if I have a really fancy mouse? Can my friend safely blame his loss in League of Legends on his slow USB port?
The Answer
SuperUser contributors AFH and Michael Hamilton have the answer for us. First up, AFH:
Followed by the answer from Michael Hamilton:
Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.
A standard mouse will send a 3-byte packet containing info on X/Y position information as well as button information. Considering that 3 bytes are transferred each cycle of the polling rate, you could have 300 bytes per second being transferred.
By default, the USB polling rate is 125hz, so by our logic, the amount of data being transmitted is 375 bytes per second.
Based on this, I do not think USB 3.0 is going to be any more beneficial than USB 2.0 (or even 1.0).
