Mouse Lag in Games
 

My Problem:

Several of my games (typically, but not always, graphically intensive ones), have a duration when moving the mouse that varies from making it very difficult to aim, to having to wait about a second after my mouse moves left to see my character move left on the screen. (It's not choppy, it's a delay in movement). I have gotten spectatular frame rates while having the lag problem at the same time, so I do not believe that this is just my computer being too old. I have been told elsewhere to lower the quality, but in most of the problem games, even minimum quality still lags enough that I cannot aim, and the rest are so horrible looking that I can't stand it. One example is FarCry. I lowered the quality to minimum, and I still got enough lag that I couldn't get headshots, so I went into the config file to lower it below the normally possible quality. I lowered the resolution to 320 x 240 as opposed to the minimum 800 x 600, I turned the trees into doom-style sprites, lowered resolution so badly that Jack Carver's hand was all solid colors, and lowered the lighting quality so low that it made my eyes pink looking at it for 30 minutes. It worked the lag was gone, and I could sortof play, but after playing for a few hours, I decided it just wasn't worth it. I went to go play Doom on an older comp, which looked quite impressive after dealing with this for so long. My computer may not be top knotch, but it's not that horrible. My friend's Dad, whose computer is much poorer than mine, can play FarCry with no input lag at all. The problem only affects Direct3d

Hardware Info:

Modified Dell Dimension 8200 (but the problem has been there since before it was modified, and has improved only slightly over the period of part replacement)

Before Modification: Geforce4 MX420, 512mb rd ram, 80gb hard drive space, 2.0ghz Pentium 4.

After Modification: ATI Radeon 9800 Pro, 1gb rd ram, 2 80gb hard drives, 2.0ghz Pentium 4.

Software Info:

I am currently duel-booting with SuSE Linux 9.1 Professional, and Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 2. The master hard drive has two partitions, the primary is formatted in NTFS and has Windows on it, and the other partition is a small partition formatted in FAT32. The slave has Linux and a swap partition on it, and the bootloader I use is grub, stored on a floppy I always leave in my drive. Ya know...funny thing is...I don't have this problem in Linux.

My Change or Remove Programs List as of this post. Notes added:

Ad-Aware SE Personal
ATI Software Uninstall Utility
ATI Control Panel
ATI Display Driver
CloneCD
DAEMON Tools
Doom Builder <--A program that makes levels for Doom
HighMAT Extension to Microsoft Windows XP CD Writing Wizard <--I have no idea what this is)
Jasc Paint Shop Pro 8
Java 2 Runtime Environment, SE v1.4.2_05
LiveReg (Symantec Corporation)
LiveUpdate 2.5 (Symantec Corporation)
Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004
Macromedia Extension Manager
MathGV 3.1
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1
Microsoft Data Access Components KB870669
Microsoft IntelliPoint 4.1
Microsoft Windows Journal Viewer
Mozilla Firefox (0.9.3)
Mozilla Thunderbird (0.7.3)
Norton Internet Security Professional
SimTheme Park
Steam
Theme Park World Fix <-- Makes SimTheme Park compatible with XP
Windows Updates
-Windows Media Format Runtime
-Windows Media Player 10
Windows XP Service Pack 2
Yahoo! Messenger
Yahoo! Messenger Explorer Bar

I am currently using DirectX 9.0b, but this has happened with 8.0 as well.

Re: Mouse Lag in Games
 

What kind of mouse? If it is cordless, it has only been fairly recently that cordless mice have come into their own for FPS style gaming.

If it's not that, there are a lot of things to consider, first off, though, it looks like your PC might be a bit underpowered for the games you're playing. You have a good graphics card, plenty of ram, but what speed is the CPU? Doom 3 is beyond bleeding edge graphics, and that means if you don't have some serious hardware, you'll suffer with lag. And you may suffer with some lag even with the most modern hardware. Doom 3 is that tough on a system.

Farcry is another top notch graphical game, and is often used for benchmarking systems for this reason.

All this said, there could be other things causing this problem, so I'll give a list of things I'd check:

First: Open up msconfig, (Start, run, type msconfig), and go to the Startup page. Do some serious housecleaning in there! Disable anything that isn't absolutely critical for you! If you have Realplayer installed, it does NOT need to have it's little applet in there to run when needed, so remove it! Same for Quicktime, AOL, Winamp, etcetera. I personally do not run ANY tray programs save my keyboard configuration applet, and my Antivirus...no video card tools in my tray, no NOTHING in my tray save those).

Second: Scope out your mouse. If it isn't a newer optical style mouse, (if it has no ball underneath, instead has a little light, you may be okay), consider getting one. They are far more accurate and responsive for gameplay. Consider a quality mouse, either a Microsoft, Logitech would be good. I wouldn't go cordless, but if you do, don't get less than a Logitech MX700, which was the first mouse Tom's Hardware Guide pronounced 'Fit for Gaming' when it comes to FPS lag. (I have one, and they're right, MX700 is a great mouse, but you could do as well with a far less expensive corded mouse).

Increase the sensitivity of your mouse in the Control Panel, under Printers and Other Hardware you'll find the applet for controlling your mouse.

If you are using the drivers that came with your mouse, you can try using generic drivers that ship with Windows, I've seen a few mouse drivers from manufacturers that weren't all that great, but the mice typically perform flawlessly with stock Windows drivers, so that's a thing you might look into.

See if this stuff gets you anywhere for starters. Luck! :)

Re: Mouse Lag in Games
 

1. It's not cordless. I personally do not like the idea of a cordless mouse. The cord is plenty long enough, so why would I need to go wireless?
3. There's nothing there. I'm a reformat junkie, and I reformatted only a few weeks ago. There's nothing to uncheck but yahoo.
4. I've been through 4 mice since I got the computer 2 years ago. I have experienced the problem with each of them. I recently figured out how to hook up two mice at once and they both lag
5. I've fiddled around like crazy with the setup. Unfortunatly, I cannot get any different result.
2. Myst III Exile is one of the worst laggers. It lags as bad as full quality 1600 x 1200 Farcry on minimum quality! :eek: When that game was around most people had crappy Windows 98 machines

I still feel like blaiming the CPU though as it sounds like a likely culprit. Could the CPU be defective? It did come from Dell after all. :p I'm getting a new CPU for christmas, so if it's the CPU, that's good news, hehe.

Re: Mouse Lag in Games
 

What kind of mice? PS2? USB? Have you tried switching from one type to another?

Are your mice fairly high resolution mice? (Cheap low res mice will, especially at high res screens like what you are running, move with almost no precision, which could seem like lag, especially when trying to get that coveted 'head shot', I'd get a quality mouse by a name brand company, and one that is fairly high res, like any of MS's Intellimouse Explorer models, or the Logitech corded MX500).

As for your CPU, I assume you mean the whole case, not just the chip. I doubt that's the problem, but you never know. You're a 'reinstall freak', when you reinstalled, did you install all the latest chipset drivers for your motherboard?

Well sorry if I've not been helpful, I did take a shot at it. Good luck.

Re: Mouse Lag in Games
 

Right now, I have two mice plugged in to my computer. One is a PS/2 generic mouse, the other is a USB Intellimouse Optical. Both behave identically concerning the lag problem.

I was not aware Dell needed any drivers beyond the vid card. As soon as I find these drivers I will download them.

Re: Mouse Lag in Games
 

It'd be nice if that helped, heheh. :)

I'm sure Dell has them, but if you can't find them, find out what chipset your motherboard is based on, (Last I knew, Dell usually used Intel chipsets), and download them from the manufacturer of the chipset. (I always get my drivers from the source actually, but I always build my own machine too).

Re: Mouse Lag in Games
 

1. You definitely need chipset drivers dude. Things don't work as they should without them

2. Piss the second mouse off, eh? Uninstall Intellipoint and let the mouse use native windows drivers if it works with them. Should be more responsive without excess software overlay. ( I NEVER use mouse drivers.)

3. Consider a better mouse. Intellimouse Explorers are notorious for lagginess. The Logitech mentioned is far better, and even an A4Tech Optical would beat the MS one, I'd imagine.

Re: Mouse Lag in Games
 

I love my Logitech lol...

And I'm with ya on the Mouse Drivers, I don't use the provided drivers, and never have. I suffer everytime I try using those junk Intellipoint drivers, and Logitech's make those look good, so I'll stick with my generic Windows drivers heheh.

I'd never heard of any lagginess problems with the Intellimouse explorer, at least my optical one was among the most responsive mice I'd ever owned at that time. They weren't very durable though, I hate buying 2 mice a year, and I was doing that with the Intellimouse, so now I'm a Logitech guy. ;)

Re: Mouse Lag in Games
 

1. I can't find them. Dell's website wants an ID number of some sort and I don't know where to find it.

2. This has been happening ever since I got the computer, and I have been through several mice. It hasn't changed it. It happens in Direct3d games. It doesn't happen in OpenGL (or at least hardly at all) and it doesn't happen on the desktop. In Farcry I edited the config to get OpenGL. I got HIDOUS FPS because OpenGL in farcry is unfinished and crappy, but got no mouse lag.

3. I use this mouse because it's the only semetrical mouse with more than 3 buttons. I want to have a mouse with more buttons and I'm a lefty. That doesn't leave many options open unfortunatly.

Re: Mouse Lag in Games
 

Try searching their Downloads page rather than the product homepage or a customer account. You can search by product type and model number there ;)