1000 Hz wireless mouse movement causes screen stuttering (Windows 11)

Hi all, I am trying out a new Framework 13 AMD and noticed a weird issue that I had never observed on a different machine. Has anyone observed it, or do you have any debugging advice?

Quick edit: As I explained in a later post, this mainly happens when I enable the mouse’s high report rate above 125 Hz up to 1000 Hz (the maximum).

Short explanation

With the USB dongle for Logitech G305 plugged in, when I start moving the mouse, the screen framerate starts dropping and sometimes the screen completely stutters for about half a second.

After trying so many combinations (see below), I have only 2 hypotheses, both of which are somewhat unlikely:

  • The USB communication somehow overloads the CPU, but that is not very likely because the CPU usage in the Task Manager stays low.
  • There is some kind of weird radio interference, but even if I move the mouse and dongle 1 meter from the laptop to a USB hub, it still happens with the same intensity.

What I tried

  • What applications does it happen in?
    It is independent.
    For example, in Chrome, in the simple line movement test, I get 60 fps, but when I start moving the USB mouse, it drops to about 55 fps and stutters. If I move the mouse using my trackpad, it stays at 60 fps.
    I also tried a simple animation (Vulkan Cube) from the Vulkan SDK, it also happens there that my fps decreases from 60 fps when I start moving the mouse.

  • Does it happen when I move the mouse using the trackpad?
    No, it does not. The trackpad is fine.

  • Does it happen with a wired USB-A mouse without a wireless dongle?
    No, it does not.

  • Does the same mouse do it on other laptops?
    No, it does not.

  • Is it the USB-A expansion card?
    No, because it happens even when I plug the USB-A dongle into a USB-C hub plugged into a USB-C expansion card.

  • Is it because of a power-saving mode?
    No, it happens even on Best performance and even when plugged in.

  • Is the CPU use in Task Manager showing an increase?
    Not really. I noticed that even the System interrupts stay below 1% CPU.

  • Are there any related errors in Event Viewer?
    No.

  • Do you have the latest BIOS and drivers?
    Yes, BIOS 3.05, latest driver bundle.

Is it the same in all expansion ports? They are not all identical.

Yes, I just tried. It seems to be independent on which ports or if you plug a hub in between.

1 Like

I found out it has to do with the mouse report rate. Since it is a gaming mouse, it defaults to the high-performance 1000 Hz report rate, so basically the mouse is sending a new state every 1 ms. If I set it to low-power 125 Hz, it behaves like any other mouse and the stuttering improves. Interestingly enough, this is the only laptop having issues with that. Any ideas how to improve it?

1 Like