Should I plug the mouse into a USB 3.0 port

mouseusb

I'm looking for an authoritative answer, backed by data. A friend asked me the other day whether he would benefit from plugging his mouse into a USB 3.0 port instead of an available 2.0 port. I flippantly replied that it would make no difference at all. Certainly I'm not the only one to think that. See answers on:

Intuitively, I don't think data throughput should be an issue. Mice worked fine over a serial port, and those transfer at a maximum of 112.5 Kbps. USB 1.0 runs at 1.5Mbps (slow) or 12Mbps (fast). USB 2.0 can handle 480Mbps, and 3.0 can reach 5 Gbps.

But what about response speed? Are there published studies of response time between USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports?

My question is, was I right? Would it matter if I have a really fancy mouse? Can my friend safely blame his loss in League of Legends on his slow USB port?

Best Answer

  1. A mouse is a slow device (the old PS/2 standard was RS232C-based), so USB1 is more than adequate.
  2. USB3 ports have extra connectors for the high-speed transfers, but also have standard USB2 connectors for backwards compatibility.
  3. Unless your mouse has these connectors (and I cannot imagine that any mouse has) it will connect via USB2 in a USB3 connector.

So you are entirely correct: plugging a mouse into a USB3 connector confers no benefit whatever. If a mouse responds slowly, it is because something else is hogging the CPU to the detriment of the mouse driver.

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