Question about Mice, Sensitivity, and DPI

[Kewlx25]

I got a Sidewinder X8 waiting for me at UPS after work. I currently have a very old Intellimouse Explorer.

My question is this. With my Intellimouse, I have to turn up Windows/games/etc mouse sensitivity because the cursor would be crazy slow otherwise. Now that my new mouse will have a 4000dpi, is it advisable to turn down Windows/game sensitivity and turn up the mouse DPI?

I guess I'm a bit confused about how software sensitivity and DPI interact with each other. I noticed sometimes that when moving my mouse on the desktop, the cursor moves more than 1 pixel at a time. Is this caused by sensitivity artificially accelerating my cursor speed by causing my average movement to be greater than 1 pixel per movement event from the mouse? Will reducing software sensitivity and cranking up the DPI cause my cursor to move one-for-one?

 

[number13]

higher the dpi the faster the mouse is, hook it up and give it a try, adjust as necessary

 

[andybird123]

as number13 says, the higher the dpi the faster the mouse

and yes, you are correct - at the moment you are telling windows that for every "increment" of movement of the mouse it detects, it should move the cursor further, which is why you see the cursor "jump" when you only move the mouse a small amount

with a high dpi mouse, you can turn down windows sensitivity... when you move the mouse alot it will move faster on the screen (as the mouse will detect more increments by itself) and you'll also get finer control by moving the mouse slowly you'll only move one pixel at a time

your intellimouse has a dpi around 450 and monitors usually around 96 dpi - so with windows set to neutral you would see 4.6 inches of movement on the screen for 1 inch of movement of the mouse, meaning you'd need a mousepad area of 4.7 inches corner to corner

with 4000dpi and windows set to the same sensitivity you'd be able to move the mouse half an inch to move the cursor on the screen corner to corner

gaming mice are adjustable via a button on the mouse, so that when in normal desktop mode you can have relatively low sensitivity to make it easier to use, but as soon as you go in to a game you can turn up the sensitivity without having to go off in to a menu somewhere to adjust it, plus obviously you get finer per pixel control without sacrificing speed of movement

 

[Kewlx25]

Best answer selected by Kewlx25.