Keyboards: 8K polling rate, do you?

mrk

mrk

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I read before that KB polling rate at 8K has a CPU impact but having ran game benchmarks back to back at both 8K and 1K I see no difference between benchmark runs and mashing the keys with both hands during each run. So I did the next test, high framerate recording of keypress to on-screen action latency, now this is on an OLED monitor at 240Hz, and the recording is at 240fps slowed down to its native 1/8 speed, then saved to a 60fps output file.

You can see that whilst 1K polling is fine, 8K does have the edge. Can you notice this edge in gaming? Probably not but some games it will make a difference, for example, dodging in Black Myth: Wukong is timing critical, so even a bit of a ms might save you from getting pwned :p

First, a baseline, the MX Keys S which is connected by the Bolt dongle which RTINGS say is 1000Hz, though that's only for the USB dongle, the Keys/Keys S responds at just over 125Hz:

ZXwpnWp.gif



8000Hz:
mOMlgvA.gif


1000Hz:
TovEITY.gif


This is on the Ducky One 3 Pro Nazca Lines, so switching polling rate is simply an FN key combo with no software to install.

So for me this is a bit of a surprise, I expected there to be no meaningful difference, but here we are with objective evidence showing there is a small difference, and that there's no CPU overhead to worry about, and unlike 8k polling on a mouse which messes with various games, KB at 8k works with everything without issues.
 
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