What is DPI?
DPI stands for pixels per inch, it’s is a measurement of how far a cursor moves per inch of mouse movement. 400 DPI = 1 inch mouse movement, moves the cursor 400 pixels. You may also see CPI, counts per inch, this is just another term for DPI.
The best DPI for gaming
The best gaming DPI is 1600 DPI. The old wisdom was that lower DPI = better, more control, but this isn’t the case, gamers are just used to the DPI they started with. A modern mouse performs better at a slightly higher DPI, 1600 DPI will have lower input latency and fewer pixel skips compared to 800 DPI.
While 1600 DPI will feel too fast for some people, you should adjust your sensitivity down to get your eDPI in game and in general productivity, more on that later.
Is higher DPI better?
You want to avoid playing at too high of a DPI, anything past 12000 is likely excessive, but more importantly, some sensors at this DPI accelerate and emulate the dots per inch, causing inconsistencies, it’s not a true raw DPI. If this feels too fast for you in your OS or in game, adjust sensitivity to accommodate and fine tune your effective DPI.
How to change DPI
A lot of gaming mice have a button to quickly switch between DPI settings, you can then use a lower DPI for general computing, since a pixel skip will be less important in that environment.
You can also have two DPI levels for sniping and run and gun for example. In most gaming mice software, like Synapse and G Hub, you can set your mouse’s default DPI levels there.
Sensitivity
In addition to DPI, there are sensitivity settings that act as a multiplier to your mouse DPI. The first, is Windows native mouse sensitivity setting, this setting should always be set to the 6th notch. Any higher than 6/11 and you run the risk of skipping pixels on your mouse movements
If 6/11 in Windows is too fast for you to use, you can turn this down, but be sure your games have raw input functionality. Most games now do have a raw input setting that ignores the Windows sensitivity setting. Also make sure Enhance pointer precision is off, this introduces prediction and acceleration from Windows.
Every game has their own sensitivity setting as well, and their scales are often quite different. A mouse sensitivity calculator is a great way to translate settings from one game you’re familiar with to another.
EDPI or effective DPI (DPI x sensitivity)
This is really your true sensitivity. This combines your DPI setting in conjunction with your in-game mouse sensitivity. You can boil down eDPI has a multiplication of these two numbers. You can have a really low DPI but a really high in-game sensitivity to combine for an average eDPI.
Examples:
- 400 DPI x 2 in-game sensitivity = 800 eDPI
- 800 DPI x 1 in-game sensitivity = 800 eDPI
Because of how sensitivity works, eDPI is a per game comparable metric, the universal comparison metric is how much distance it takes to make a full 360 in an FPS, measure in Centimetres or Inches.
