I set out to prove polling rate affects my aim and instead found my favourite DPI setting

I'm a thoroughly average gamer. And in first-person shooters, I reckon I am ever so slightly above average at aiming—If aim-tester software, Aimlabs, is anything to go by, at least (top 38%, baby). But as a hardware tester, I have access to all kinds of gaming gear, and that includes competitive-level specs.

I wanted to see if the average gamer would benefit from a better polling rate and, as the average gamer, I thought I was the perfect guinea pig. So, grabbing my Asus Rog Harpe II Extreme Edition 20, a mouse with a max DPI of 65,000 and a max polling rate of 8,000 Hz, I went through the training software at different polling rates multiple times to see if it would improve my aim.

If you are unaware of what exactly a polling rate is, it is the rate at which your gaming mouse communicates with your rig. A 125 Hz polling rate gives feedback to your PC every 8 milliseconds, whereas 8,000 Hz gives feedback every 0.125 milliseconds. Generally speaking, the advice for most gamers is to linger at around 1,000 Hz, as responding every millisecond is plenty fast but not s...