Overclocking your hardware and computer to gain performance in UT is not cheating. It's the same as buying a better graphics card or using 5.1 headphones :)

Click readmore for what I've discovered from other posts and generally looking for getting the most out of your mouse!

In this article I am going to tell you how to overclock your mouses hz rate. This is the amount of reports per second that your mouse sends to unreal tournament. Obviously if you are only sending 60 reports per second then your mouse wont be as responsive as if it was sending 200. Imagine somebody goes flying in the air and you move your mouse about 120 pixels across the screen. Your mouse will tell unreal tournament where it is in only half of them locations meaning you could stop a pixel out of its true location. Increasing the hz therefore will help you to respond faster, and be more accurate. Some people prefer a less responsive mouse so that their errors in movement are not detected as often, it is sometimes a personal preference thing. There are 3 types of mouse you could have.

A serial mouse (very old)

Mice using these connections run at 30 - 60hz

A ps2 mouse

Mice using these connections run at 40hz in win98/me and 60hz in 2000/xp and up to 200hz after tweaking

A usb mouse

Mice running on a usb port run at 124hz and up to 1000hz after tweaking.

Running your mouse on a USB port is more computer intensive. During high periods of computer load you may experiance mouse problems. If you suffer from this right click on my computer, go to properties. go (In Windows 2000/XP select Hardware next), then the Device Manager tab. Scroll down to Universal Serial Bus controllers & select your USB Universal Host Controller, e.g. VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB Universal Host Controller. Open it, then select the Advanced tab & Tick, Disable USB error detection. Restart your PC for the change to take effect.

Right lets start tweaking your mouse!

Step 1) First download the program mouserate You can use this to see how fast your mouse is currently running.

Step 2a) Serial connection
I havn't came across any tweaks for a serial mouse, if you know any please post them in the comments on this article. Serial technology is so old your mouse must be quite poor, you should consider upgrading your mouse! The best bet is to upgrade to a new usb mouse. Soz.

Step 2b) PS2 connection
Download ps2 rate Use this program to overclock your ps2 port to 200hz. This won't always work on all computers so after a reboot use step 3 to check it's worked.

Step 2c) USB connection
Download USB Mouserate Switcher 1.1 and run it. You have a choice of overclocking your mouse to 250hz(4ms) 500hz(2ms) or 1000hz(1ms). Go no to the settings you do not wish to use. E.g. if you want 1000hz go no to 250hz, no to 500hz, and yes to 1000hz. Reboot and then go to step 3 to make sure it has worked correctly.

Step 3) Run mouserate again to make sure the mouse is running at the correct speed! If it is running at a variation of speeds e.g. jumping from 250hz to 500hz, then this is a bug and you should try to experiment with the settings to try to get a constant hz rate. You may not be able to do this but your mouse will still run smoother than before.

Step 4) Test your new settings in UT and see how much smoother your mouse is running at!

Notes;

If you are struggling for computer power, considering getting a ps2 adapter for your usb mouse and running on tweaked ps2 instead. These are very cheap

Although I've never seen it happen, increasing hz could stop your mouse from responding entirely, we cannot be held responsible for any damage caused through people trying this. If you are very concerned consider looking up on google to see if others have tried the same thing with your mouse.

I've heard in some places that increasing the hz rate will make your Mouse more sensitive to any input, this can improve responsiveness although due to this it may make more accurate movements more awkward.

Your brain has a 6ms reaction time by default. What you react to determines how fast your reactions are, not a key training of the brains reaction time. However tweaking your mouse's hz DOES increase the reaction time ;).