The Great Sensor Debate -2- High DPI VS Low DPI

So which should you use? In most games, it probably won't matter. In First Person Shooters, it might. Do the tests in the video, let me know how you go!

To Test:

1. Set your DPI levels to 400 / 800 and 3200
2. Bind a key in game to change between high sensitivity and low sensitivity
3. Move the mouse slowly in game, then quickly, then do random movements just to get a feel for it
4. Play a game with both settings as the final test

The Great Sensor Debate -2- High DPI VS Low DPI

[BatteryAzz]

I think the jittery movement at (too) low DPI can be simply explained. The sensor resolution i.e sampling of your mousepad is too coarse to translate in all of the pixels on screen, so you notice this when doing soft movements zoomed in. To achieve the same sensitivity vs high DPI (this is key) the sensor delta has to be multiplied in software by too much and so the cursor is effectively skipping pixels.

Conversely, in theory playing high DPI super low sens at low in-game resolution can have the opposite effect, where very slight mouse movements don't translate into on-screen movement at all, because the sensor delta is downsampled to effectively zilch.

[gazroxcod]

In CS:GO you can put in "sv_cheats 1" and then "fov_cs_debug 1" to get it extremely zoomed in to check if it jitters and alike in High and Low sensitivity! Do this in a Offline map with No bots :).

[NoAimNoGain]

Stupidly high CPI settings IS a marketing gimmick but CPI are definitelly important. Having said that, it has very little to do with precission; it mainly falls into the realm of personal preference.

To understand the need for higher or lower DPI first you need to know what is pixel skipping (sometimes confused with mouse jittering). When we are at our desktop and change the mouse sensitivity on windows, we are modifying the relationship between the mouse and the screen in a very particular way: at default settings (6/11), the cursor will move one pixel every time the mouse sends a movement input. If we rise that value to 8/11, the cursor will skip 1 pixel in every move; in other words, it will move in steps of 2 pixels instead of one. On the contrary, if we lower the value to, lets say, 4/11, windows will ignore 1 input from the mouse every 2 inputs.

The in-game sensitivity works in a similar fashion. If you want to have a high degree of control with your in-game movement, you need to configure your in-game sensitivity to a very low setting and use only your CPI settings to accommodate your in-game movement. But you have to take 3 things into consideration here:

1. You will probably need a mouse that has 50 CPI native steps to configure your sensitivity with a high degree of customization. Not all mice have that.

2. Some people don't like their mouse to be so sensitive to minor inputs. Using very high CPI with very low sensitivity could be equal in terms of mousepad distance / movement on screen to a low DPI with high sensitivity but when using high CPI the mouse reacts to every movement, no matter how minuscule.

3. Using very high CPI adds a lot of noise to the signal captured by your mouse which can lead to bad tracking issues.

[famesoff]

For anyone who wants to switch to the new dpi comfortably:
old_dpi / new_dpi * old_game_sens = new_game_sens;

[nolife]

Thank you, ive always tought i cant do precise movements because of my hand but after setting my sensitivity to 65cm/360 with 3200dpi it has made my aim much better in csgo, battlefield and cod4 . (I use zowie fk2).

[Xxpr]

High DPI VS Low DPI is like measuring something in mm vs cm, it's always going to be more accurate the more sampling (higher dpi/mm measurement) without sacrificing sensitivity.

[l]

imo, high dpi is great ONLY if you're a robot. the high dpi will pick up every micro jitter even if your hand isn't moving. yes it is smoother because it is picking up more information and being more precise, but it doesn't help with humans and human error. i used to game on high dpi, low in game for years. recently switched to low dpi, high in game (did calculations to keep the same feel with different dpi) and noticed my aim is significantly better on lower dpi. the lower dpi helps control the human error. high dpi is picking up too much information to the point it becomes a disadvantage. pixel skipping isn't going to mess you up unless you exclusively play something that involves sniping.

[RoboticusMusic]

So why do Shroud and all pros use 400 dpi and sometimes 800 dpi?

[seventus]

The best DPI for your mouse is either the native resolution of the sensor or some divided value. Take my zowie fk1 as an example. It has a native dpi of 1600. The steps of 400 and 800 are all subdividable with the native dpi of 1600. In order to get to lower dpi from the 1600 sensor, the mouse has to lower the amount of imaginary pixels it writes to the mousepad with the optic lense so the pixel accuracy is decreased.

The last dpi step on my zowie fk1 is 3200, a doubling of the native resolution. In order to accomplish this, you have to halve the pixels which can also cause some problems. I'm not very savvy on this but there's alot of interesting science behind mouse dpi. So using both higher and lower than native resolution can basically result in sub-optimal performance. However, if you force a native 1600 dpi sensor to 2000 dpi via some software, that is a further step away from perfection. If the values aren't even like 400, 800, 1600, 3200 then the way the grid of pixels gets divided in weird ways. So basically use your sensors native dpi or a subdivision of it like 800. Only use 400 dpi if you're playing on 4:3 with low resultions like 1024x768 otherwise it will skip pixels and jump about as shown in this (and other) videos. So dpi also depends on your resolution. Usually 800 is enough for 1080 res. If you're gaming in 4k res you'd then need even more dpi to avoid skipping pixels, so with 4k you definitely want atleast 1600, maybe even 3200 I dunno the values here.

That's all I've got o.o hope some1 found it interesting/useful.

EDIT: On a sidenote. Most CSGO professionals play on low 4:3 resolutions with 400 dpi so the pixel skipping issue does not affect them much. Those that use 800 dpi are usually also the ones playing in 1920:1080. However, a few pros arent aware of the above information and play in 1920:1080 with 400 dpi, but they are in the vast minority.

[alextornopsky]

Personally, I like 1, 600 dpi because it's sort of a middle ground between 3, 200 and 800/400

[nikitostp]

You guys, I see, you don’t understand what a high dpi is. You think that when you have low dpi, then aim works. And when the high DPI, accuracy works. Aim can improve, but accuracy is not. I probably agree with this, but you can just put high dpi and low sens in the game. It will be comfortable to feel and you will not miss, you will have both aim and accuracy. It's just that when you train an aim, it takes a very long time, and with high DPI and low sens, you will comfortably develop your aim and plus you will have accuracy. And you can win faster.

[Aidiakapi]

It's a pretty old video, but it's fairly simple to explain this. With a low DPI like 400, the minimum amount of movement that can be an input to your game is 1/400th of an inch. This is then multiplied by your sensitivity, and used as a metric for how much rotation should be triggered. The latter part varies per game. Say your game is running at 120fps with a 120Hz monitor, then moving say 3.81mm with your mouse, sends 60 updates to the game. This basically means that the game only has new input half of the frames, causing it to stutter.

On the contrary, if you have say 1600 dpi, the game gets 240 updates of position in the same time, allowing it to render every frame perfectly with a new position.

Because 3.81mm is definitely not a long distance, you especially notice it when moving your mouse slowly, and for high intensity movements, it's not going to be very noticeable. As the distance gets smaller, the problem is exaggerated. However, if you're playing on 120Hz with 3200dpi, you need to be moving with less speed than 0.9525mm before you'd possibly get any jittering. In general, it's not a problem at that point anymore.

I'm a mechanically pretty average player, but I currently use 1600 dpi, but might just up it to 3200dpi. I do agree that beyond values like that, you'd need to be moving so incredibly slow that it's just not really going to happen in practice.

[babab_m]

For me, i have shaky nervous hands, that low dpi skipping acts as a filter that smooths out the tiny hand vibrations, people with more stable hands can benefit from higher dpi... Although i'll admit the effect is negligeable 99% of the time

[davideloi]

You are the best. Seriously. It's a pleasure to watch your videos. Also the music in the background is pleasant. I mean: not too loud, non disturbing. Great

[Gumpa]

I would say that this jittering might come from stepping up the ingame sens. If you set DPI to 800 and ingame sens to 4 it will be wobbly due to the ingame sens, i think. It would be perfectly adjusted at 3200dpi with ingame sens 1. I think the wobble might come from the ingame multiplication of the values. At the end of the day DPI just says how many pixle screens will passed by the mouse in one inch of mouse movement.

[Phexlar]

I did a similar test on csgo.... if you play with low dpi and high In game Sensitivity, your cross hair will jump across a few pixels instead of moving smoothly. Which is why I try to have high enough dpi while having the lowest in game sense I can so it's smooth as it will help with shooting people over long range.

[louis]

your channel is useful as fuck. i bought a logitech g403 because of it and no regrets.

[ZombieLincoln]

What you’re seeing is basically aliasing but on the path the mouse makes

[benc]

I personally would go a lower DPI over high 90% of the time. This is because your aim is often smoother and less affected by small muscle movements (shivering, even chewing). But I think its also important to not have a too low dpi, so you can still flick a 180 or check at 90 degree angles.

[TheGoodChap]

I use 800 at 1.3 in game for CSGO and it's perfect for me. I noticed it was smoother at 1600 but something felt wrong and I started having issues playing the game until I changed it back. Although I do use a mouse with a sensor that has a notorious latency and inconsistent acceleration you can't disable.