M15x & M17x Touchpad cursor movement & polling rate problems

NOTE FROM MOD: See this post for info from Dell re: the touchpad polling rate -

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ent-polling-rate-problems-22.html#post6316483



The mouse is slow because for whatever reason (at least on my machine) the driver is only polling the touch pad at 20hz, when I uninstall the synaptic driver the windows default one runs at about 45hz. It should be running at LEAST 60, preferably 100 or 200hz.

I played with some drivers and registry keys to no avail, but I'm going to just post the issue here in case anyone knows how to change it or wants to have a crack at it

Screenshots of the mouse rate



And if you want to check your mouse you can search for mouserate.exe and it should tell you how fast your mouse is polling. Anyone willing to help me out on this is greatly appreciated! There maybe already a fix but last I found others were complaining about it too.

 

i assume you mean the touchpad ?
if so, that explains why it is so crappy and why windows driver is a tad better than the synaptics one.
if there could be a way to change it that might help with the unusable touchpad of m17x.

 

I did notice how slow it was in the pre-installed windows with the dell drivers, Upon reformating the mouse is not as annoying.

 

So any ideas on how to change the polling interval?

 

I have not tried to play around with any drivers , but with the fresh install, using the windows drivers, the issue is less noticeable.

 

Yeah. It's a known fact that the windows driver behaves better what I didn't know is why, and now I do

 

I'm guessing there's no way to easily edit the polling on the Synaptics driver? Wish I could because I do like the 2 finger scrolling.

 

Wow great find. This would explain it for me.. I may need to do some searching on how to override that.. +rep

 

if you go into control panel, can't you select the polling rate for the mouse? hardware tab and the select the hardware from the list and click properties and then advanced settings.

or directly from device manager perhaps?

 

No way to override it from the control panel or device manager. I'm looking into modifying drivers or something but PS/2 is such an old and terrible connection to use for a mouse it's been tough to find references. I'm trying to mod the synaptic drivers or something to keep the nice multitouch features

 

Yeah. I figured it wontbe easy..

 

Just another supporting evidence, here's the poll rate of my XPS M1730:

 

Can't believe MS would take that out of the mouse driver in Vista or 7. Bummer...

Mine polls at 125 Hz when the polling rate was set to 100. I set it to 200 but haven't restarted yet...

 

125 HZ is the poll rate of for USB HIDs, standard atleast. Unfortunately both the Keyboard and Touchpad are PS/2 which makes no sense to me.

 

the only thing that gives a little hope is that the microsoft driver has a higher polling rate, maning it can be changed on the driver level. question is how to tweak the driver...

 

in the old synaptics drivers there was something called "Pointer refresh rate".. i found it in the inf files of the driver.. looks like those are registry entries that need to appear..
see here : http://contents.driverguide.com/con...ad_Synaptics_v8.3.5/WinWDF/Full/ALL/SynPD.inf

maybe that's a direction i just don't have the time right now to test it - too much work..

 

I've tried that driver already, It's just a checkbox in the options menu with "fast poll" or "slow poll", and it makes no difference whatsoever. :/

 

free bump. i too am looking for a way to increase the polling rate on my M15x. mine's at ~17hz.

 

Just go to CP/Hardware&Sound/Devices&Printers/Mouse, click on the Pointer Options tab and adjust the pointer speed. If it is locked on Slow, disconnect your mouse (or the wireless receiver) and use the touchpad to increase the speed to your taste, click Apply and OK. Reconnect the mouse and it will operate at the faster speed again. It's a small Windows glitch that sometimes occurs.

 

we arent referring to the DPI of the mouse here.
What you told us to do was to increase the DPI of the touchpad.
The polling rate is the rate at which the touchpad checks the new position of your fingers and makes adjustments accordingly. when the DPI falls below ~100hz, it gives the impression of a laggy mouse. changing the DPI will not increase polling rate.

 

is the m15x touchpad the same as the m17x

 

It appears to be the same because all m15x laptops have crappy touchpads

 

Another bump. Someone has to be able to find a solution for this. There has to be a way to increase the polling rate on the touchpad when using the Synaptics drivers...

Has anyone called Alienware tech support and asked what their take is on it?

A 24-28Hz sample rate is just ridiculous and unacceptable. I just checked the sample rate on my XPS M1730, it's in the mid 80's and the touchpad feels fine to use.

Yeah, yeah, use a mouse. I'm sorry, but that's simply a stupid argument. This is an expensive and high-quality computer and a touchpad that is well below par for even an average laptop is just unbelievable.

 

have you tried contacting aw?

 

Is there a hardware limitation on the polling rate or solely software driven?

 

That's a good question. I suspect it's a hw issue. Otherwise Dell would have changed it by now. But if it's hw issue how the hell did they approve installing those crappy pads in such high end machines?

 

Yea probably cost savings for them IMO.. Why opt for a more costly better responsive pad if that was the case.. Its just sad, the xps and other systems have a really nice touch pad. Heck even net books have great touch pads.. This is by far the worse touchpad I have every seen. :-( Oh well. Not that i use it much. I always have external mouse hooked up.. It would would be nice to have a good one for when it is needed.

 

I'm sure it's the drivers based on the fact that going from the synaptics ones back to the built-in Windows drivers bumps it back up into the 45ish hz range. There used to be a way to adjust the PS2 polling rate via the port driver in device manager, but Microsoft removed that. Either way would be a viable option, but I can assure you that the trackpad itself supports greater than what we're seeing.

 

damn, just spent another hour on googling for a solution.
It seems like the only real way to solve it is to write our own driver for the thing and i am not that invested in this issue

 

I've researched it extensively, too. Unfortunately, you're somewhat correct. Without assistance from Synaptics or Microsoft, we wouldn't need to start from scratch but we'd need to find a way to modify the current touchpad or port driver to force a higher polling rate.

If anyone else happens to turn something up, let us know. People have hacked the built-in Windows USB driver to force a higher polling rate, I don't see why someone wouldn't be able to do the same for the PS2 port.

 

I called Alienware tech support last night. The technician seemed knowledgeable and said he'd never heard the complaint before. I pointed him to this thread to illustrate it's not just my issue. I also explained that my old XPS (with an older Synaptics touchpad connected via PS/2) had a 3-4X higher polling rate and sent him screenshots of the mouse rate checker from the M17x with and without drivers as well as from my M1730. He said he would escalate this to the engineering team and should at least have some information in a few days.

 

Awesome, thanks for the extra effort. That was going to be my next step.

 

I sent a PM to Bill to see if there is anyway to get a software engineer to look at this. It should be an easy fix for them if its just increasing the polling rate on the driver.. *crosses fingers*

 

Wow talk about a quick reply. Bill just got back to me and said he would send it off and have someone check into this thread and keep us posted.. I hope they can resolve this quickly.. Hopefully its just a polling issue..

 

It's entirely software. I don't have a method to test the actual poll rate, but in Linux the mouse is perfectly smooth.

 

Thats what I thought. I hope Bill is able to have someone look at this and resolve it fairly quickly. Seems easy enough to me...

 

I can't wait till i can finally use the touchpad again

 

Do Dell develop their own frivers or just approve synaptics ones? If it's the latter it might take some time..

 

I dont know but to adjust polling shouldn't require much rework lol.. They probably sign off on them and dont write them.. All I know it would be nice for both M17x and M15x users to be able to use the touch pad properly.

 

I've got the same issue on my M15x. It's not too much of a bug, since it's still usable and I usually have it on my desk with my trusty G9x doing the pointing work, but it's still annoying when I want to be away from an outlet and use this thing comfortably on my lap. Let's hope we get something soon.

 

I use an external mouse 99% of the time anyways but still doesn't mean I dont want a working touch pad for when its needed lol.. I hope they get this squared away fast.


For the dell reps that may start reviewing this thread here is another one that talks about it as well.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...ion-lackluster-touchpad-r2-3.html#post6177350

 

I got the three threads and sent them to engineering. Will keep you all posted.

DELL-Chris M

 

Thanks Chris. We appreciate it.

 

I will email them through the week. My next con call with them is next wednesday.

 

Thanks a bunch, Chris! If Synaptics is going to get involved (you provide their drivers), an easy example of the problem is comparing the mouse pointer movement with the Synaptics drivers versus the built-in Windows ones. The Synaptics drivers make the mouse movement far *more* choppy. The built-in drivers are less choppy, but by no means how it should be, and you also lose all of the touchpad specific settings, such as touch pressure and scroll regions.

Testing the polling rate is also easy with this utility:

tscherwitschke.de->downloads

Just move the mouse over the application area and it will show you how often the mouse is refreshing. Easy for comparing different drivers and seeing the problem if you compare the results with external mice or even just trackpads on other computers (M1730 reports in the 80s).

The general concensus is that an optimal polling rate is between 250 and 500 for FPS gaming, varying from game to game and person to person. If they're going to modify drivers, perhaps adding an option to adjust this between 20 and 250-500 would be best, as this gives the flexibility for varying situations. Otherwise, locking it at 250 would be a fair compromise (others feel free to chime in on this). Also, don't forget drivers are different between x86 and x64 so both may need to be provided (was this system even sold with the 32-bit option?).

Just trying to pool everything into one post for you to forward off. If I missed anything, someone else feel free to chime in as well.

 

The Alienware support rep I spoke to asked for screenshots of the polling rates of both of my M17x (Synaptics PS/2 touchpad V7.0) and my XPS M1730 (Synaptics PS/2 touchpad V6.3). I'll attach them here as well for reference:

M17x touchpad with Dell Synaptics driver


M17x touchpad without driver


M17x with external mouse


XPS M1730 with Dell Synaptics driver


Obviously, we would expect the same or better performance on the M17x than previous generation Dell laptops with Synaptics touchpads.

 

60 would be acceptable for a trackpad, USB in Win7 runs at 120hz by default. I don't think PS/2 supports 200 even in the best of situations, but if I'm not mistaken people used to be able to tweak it up to 100 or a bit more.

 

Just the difference between the 24Hz with the driver and the 34Hz without the driver is pretty big. Both are still unacceptable and even worse because you can't change any of the settings with the default Windows driver.

60Hz or above would be usable, but it should at least match my M1730 touchpad in the mid 80s. Either way, it's certainly an issue that needs addressing. I'm glad to hear they're looking into it.

 

Props to everyone working on this.

I was shocked at how bad the touchpad is on this thing!

 

Do a google search of people trying to up the 125hz default USB polling rate in Windows Vista/7. Even from 125hz to 250hz is quite noticeable if you play FPS and compare side-by side (try a game you have to snipe in, that makes it blatantly obvious with the granularity needed). Polling frequency equates to:

125 hz = 8ms; 250 hz = 4ms; 500 hz = 2ms; 1000 hz = 1ms

Based on this, I edited my prior post and figured if we get one shot at this and only one tweak, that 250hz is a good compromise. Obviously, user-configurable like the old days would be the best solution. PS/2 definitely supports these rates at the hardware level, but there is fall-off above 500hz so people rarely go higher than that (nor is it very noticeable at that frequency anyway).