Response time is the time it takes for a device to send signals to the PC, and in the case of a mouse it is especially important because it is the time it takes for the device to send the movements and clicks we make to the PC. However, the first thing to keep in mind is that in the case of mice the response time works a bit differently, so let’s start by explaining this.

Response time and polling frequency

We should not confuse the response time with the polling frequency, despite the fact that manufacturers usually express them together almost as if they were the same magnitude. As we have said before, the response time is the time it takes for a device to send the signals to the PC, and in the case of gaming mice, this is the movements and pulsations that we make.

In gaming mice you will see that, in their characteristics, many manufacturers express the polling rate in hertz, and generally this parameter in a gaming mouse is 1000 Hz. The bad part and that it is nothing but a strategy of Marketing is to indicate that 1000 Hz of polling frequency is equivalent to 1 ms of response time when the reality is very different, and you will understand it below as soon as we define exactly what the polling frequency is.

The polling frequency , which as a frequency is expressed in hertz, is the number of times per second that the mouse (in this case) sends updated information to the PC. But one thing is the times per second that the information is sent (polling rate or polling frequency) and another thing is the time it takes for that information to reach the PC (response time).

As you can see, they are two different quantities (which are also measured in different units, since one is hertz and the other is milliseconds) that have different functions.

What is AXON Hyper Processing technology?

AXON is an embedded system based on a powerful SoC designed by Corsair that promises to provide the mouse with a polling rate of 8,000 Hz compared to the 1,000 Hz common in gaming mice. AXON Hyper Processing is optimized to process the movements and actions we perform on the mouse, processing them directly in the mouse’s SoC and sending the already processed information to the PC, thus greatly increasing efficiency.

AXON Hyper Processing uses the multi-threaded technology of its SoC to be able to process multiple signals at the same time, and this is precisely the key to its higher performance; this is combined with its deterministic algorithm optimized for signal queuing that prioritizes mouse button signals over movements to ensure critical user actions can never be lost. This is important, because as you will understand, it is not the same to process 1,000 signals per second than 8,000, and if one of these signals has to be lost due to traffic jam, it is better that it be motion, since it will have practically no impact on performance, you miss a click.

That said, according to Corsair this technology allows a polling frequency of 8,000 Hz to be reached, although they then make the mistake of saying that this equates to a response time of 0.125 ms.

As you can see, then in this graph (which we have placed just above this text) the manufacturer himself contradicts himself, and what it shows is that instead of making a signal report every 1 ms, with this technology 8 signals are reported for every 1 ms. This obviously provides better performance, or to be exact a higher signal accuracy when reporting mouse actions to the PC, but the time is still 1 ms. Of course, the difference between the reports is 0.125 ms, although this is not their response time.

Advantages and disadvantages of this technology

At the moment AXON Hyper Processing is a technology developed by Corsair and it is proprietary, so as is obvious and also logical only their mice carry it. Other manufacturers also already have peripherals with precisely 8,000 Hz polling frequency, but their approach to achieving this performance has been different from Corsair’s with its AXON technology.

In any case, as always everything has its advantages and disadvantages; We have already seen the advantages: greater signal reporting accuracy since the mouse sends 8 signals to the PC per millisecond instead of one like conventional 1,000 Hz mice, making it a much more accurate and faster mouse than others ( As we have explained before, it is not that it has 0.125 ms of response time but that since it sends 8 signals in a millisecond instead of one, the delay between these signals is 0.125 ms).

However, it also has its disadvantages; a higher polling frequency means that much more data is being sent per second to the PC, and although this information is already sent processed as we have explained before, it also implies that the equipment’s CPU has to work harder to interpret these signals and execute the commands that these entail, so in short it has a certain impact on the performance of the processor , which is why Corsair itself indicates that they only recommend using this polling frequency on high-end PCs (they literally recommend Core i7 or Ryzen 7 processors ).

On the other hand, for this technology to work it is also necessary to have certain electrical requirements in the USB; This means that it will not work properly if you connect the mouse to a USB port hub or to the USB Passthrough of a keyboard: the mouse needs to be connected directly to a USB port on the motherboard and, in fact, the manufacturer specifies that it is a USB connected directly to the chipset controller in order to have the best performance and not to an external controller such as Renesas, ASMedia or VIA.