[section_title title=”Synthetic Tests”]Synthetic Sensor Testing
This section is an evolving endeavour to improve the objectivity of mouse reviews here at Play3r, it shouldn’t necessarily be used to compare mice apples to apples but it should help us get a better feel for the quality of sensor implementation. The programs being used here are homebrew, so these results should always be taken with a pinch of salt but I think it is essential to supplement the subjective content of my reviews with some (slightly) more scientific testing.
All my testing is done on an OcUK Mega Mat XXL
Enotus Mouse Test v 0.1.4
Enotus mouse test can give us a few bits of sensor information such as DPI and polling rate. The methodology used in this benchmark is to always run it at the maximum DPI the mouse supports and also at 1000Hz.
Starting as ever with Enotus Mouse Test the Strix Claw performs pretty well, with the DPI being spot on and the tracking speed looking good. Just like with the ROCCAT Kone Pure Military the precision test which measures acceleration detected none whatsoever and hence produced no output, which goes to show how good the 3310 is when it comes to acceleration.
The smoothness result is marked as bad but I am beginning to question its worth, I think it may be more to do with the fact that the 3310 provides a much more raw data stream to Windows than laser sensors with inherent smoothing/acceleration. Presumably that would be why they tend to score better than optical sensors in the smoothness test.
Therein lays the joy of using undocumented homebrew benchmarks, I do wish someone would release some more polished tools but until then I’d still rather give you guys as much information as I can so we’ll just have to glean what we can from the results which is that we have a great tracking speed and no acceleration whatsoever which is sure to be the most important characteristic for FPS players.
Mouse Movement Recorder
This benchmark gives us a direct feed of sensor reading versus pointer movement and it also gives us an approximate polling rate. Recently I have run the test at both 500 and 1000 Hz but from here on I have decided the 500 Hz test is a bit of fat that can be trimmed as I want my reviews to be detailed, not bloated.
1000 Hz
From the screenshot we can see that for the most part the Strix Claw holds a steady bead on it’s promised 1000Hz polling rate, with any deviations within a reasonable margin. Polling rate is one area where laser sensors tend to paint a better picture in this test, but you could instead interpret the less consistent results of an optical sensor as proof it is not having its data stream messed with, either way all is good here.
Paint jitter testing
This test is a bit less scientific, but drawing lines in paint gives a good visual representation of any jitter present. The methodology here is to perform the test at 1600 DPI, 3200 DPI, and finally the maximum DPI of the particular mouse which gives us means to keep results more consistent between optical and laser sensors. All tests are run at 1000Hz.
1600 DPI
3200 DPI
5000 DPI
In the paint jitter testing the Strix Claw performed as well as we have seen of any other mouse sporting this sensor, it’s always tricky to distinguish the jaggies caused by shaky hands from sensor jitter but the consistency of the results this test yields continue to show us that jitter is not a problem on the 3310.
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