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posted by LaminatorX on Thursday March 06 2014, @08:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the satisying-clackity-clack dept.
An anonymous coward writes "Anyone know of good affordable keyboards that are low latency (preferably backed by actual stats)? Low latency is not the same as polling rate.

I had an old keyboard that was high latency (added about 30-50ms more latency when compared to a "gaming" mouse I had!) so I bought a low end "gaming" keyboard[1] which is lower latency but the keys "stick" sometimes (e.g. the system thinks keys are still being held down even though they aren't have to press the offending keys again to unstick them). I don't want to buy an expensive keyboard and find the latency to not be really much better or even worse[2]. And yes 30-50ms can be a noticeable and significant difference in games (2-3 frames).

I've done those reaction time test stuff and I get about 150-170ms using my "fastest" mouse (I have two), 170-190 with my new keyboard and 200+ms with my old keyboard. I see many people get 200+ ( see: http://cognitivefun.net/stat/1 ). At work on my employer's macbook pro I get 220+ms. So it's likely that high latency mice/keyboards[2] and screens[3] are too common. And you can appear to have 50-80ms faster reflexes just by having better equipment.

[1] an A4Tech G800V keyboard, based on one of the few less useless responses from the Other Site when I asked a similar question. Maybe it's faulty but it's going to be hard to prove since it's intermittent. FWIW I got it for half the newegg price and the place I bought it from doesn't sell A4tech mice or keyboards anymore.

[2] http://www.blackboxtoolkit.com/responsedevices.htm l
  http://www.pstnet.com/eprimedevice.cfm

[3] http://www.displaylag.com/display-database/"
 
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  • (Score: 1) by tibman on Thursday March 06 2014, @10:52PM

    by tibman (134) on Thursday March 06 2014, @10:52PM (#12436)

    Maybe on pre-built machines (bleh). It's rare to find a mobo that doesn't have PS/2 though. If you do it's because the mobo is probably really tiny and they cut it to save space.
    http://www.newegg.com/Motherboards/Category/ID-20 [newegg.com]
    http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/g uidedSearch.asp?CatId=13 [tigerdirect.com]

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 08 2014, @10:49AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 08 2014, @10:49AM (#13192)

    a bit worrying trend is that some of the motherboards there have only one ps/2 connector so you can only have either a mouse or a keyboard, not both without having to buy a splitter.

    On the other hand I have always thought it would be nice to connect the mouse to the keyboard instead of all the way down to the computer too, Anyone know ps/2 keyboards that have a ps/2 connector on the side or the back where you can connect the mouse? Perhaps it is not too hard to modify a keyboard, stealing an connector from an old broken motherboard... but I guess the keyboard cable don't have all the six wires in them? :-(

    Only problem is that the mouse cable is too damn long then I guess