EPTCyro, that's a really impressive difference between hardware! Did you get the 'Corsair K70 Rapidfire - Qwerty - Cherry MX Speed'? (just to be sure that's the correct one). Around 30ms is absolutely huge.
Yeah, It's a K70 Rapidfire RGB - the rapidfire being the MX speed version (like red switches that actuate at 1.2mm instead of 2mm) i think. The RGB bit was £40 more expensive than the regular board but i wanted it anyway - i don't like committing to having the second best version of a piece of hardware for potentially 5-10 years - and i wasn't absolutely sure that the hardware would perform the same on input lag on the non-RGB version although it extremely likely would and you could probably dig into that information somewhere.
From what i can tell, i'd say that my old board did perform like the ones on the top of that video at 9:55:
~29ms lag, low variance with ps/2 (playable)
~39ms lag, high variance with 125hz USB (a noticable delay and statistical performance loss given the same player.. although i'm not gonna blame the hardware, i'm sure that a lot of people play well even with 125hz USB although it's not ideal)
~14-15ms on the k70 rapidfire feels EXTREMELY snappy by comparison.
Button to pixel-lag is the full chain which also includes the amount of time taken to start to display the frame to you after registering the key which is non-zero. I also have a monitor that is slightly snapper than his, so my button to pixel lag would be slightly lower; the button-to-registration lag would be even lower still still since this doesn't care about how much delay your monitor adds.
My button-to-registration lag could plausibly be like 11-12ms on the K70 and 28-36ms on the WASD-V1 over USB, that's quite a huge difference for feel and for the consistency since a 1000hz poll is adding 0-1ms of lag while a 125hz poll is adding 0-8ms.
The keys actuating after being pressed down 1.2mm instead of 2mm also means that the key is actuating and sending that signal milliseconds earlier, although i can't say how many milliseconds; that improvement isn't factored into the earlier numbers that are already great. If i had to guess it could be more than 5 milliseconds earlier in the keystroke but i can't give a tight range and i could be wrong there.
I'm trying to get some good osu gameplay and recording in - was a party at my house yesterday so i was busy and couldn't use a microphone because of the background noise when i did get some alone time with it. My webcam video lag and framerate is like 3 times slower than the keyboard input lag which is funny. Can't use that to show how quick the keyboard is but i can throw a delay on the game capture and audio to sync them up or to simulate the extremely slight (~2-3 frames @240fps) button-to-registration lag.
My initial feeling on the mx speeds are positive, some accidental actuation on typing but i can't say how much i'd get used to that and it hasn't happened during osu gameplay. At least part of it is because the keyboard layout isn't the same as my last one so some buttons are physically in different positions which is a muscle memory problem that will go away soon.
I'l reserve most of my judgement for after the first week or so since there's a huge adjustment period for a new keyboard. It's not very fatiguing to stream on since the force and the actuation distance are both easier and i don't have a need to press the keys down harder/faster than i feel like to make sure that it actuates when trying to maximize endurance.
This is roughly what the force looks like: Red on the top, Speed in the middle and Brown on bottom
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/QisR5c2.png)
Speed is like red but actuates and bottoms out earlier, the distance between actuation and the bottom of the switch is similar
Speed actuates as soon as you hit 1.2mm @45cn
Brown needed me to apply ~55cn of pressure around 1.4mm and then hold the switch down to 2mm; i'd very occasionally get over the pressure bump but not press the key down far enough afterwards to actuate it.
I think that reds and browns are still safe switches to buy; some of the other ones have concerns like blue having the actuation and reset points being far apart and speed maybe actuating too easily/accidentally for some people. I think that i'l like the speeds a lot but i can't begin to guess at the next years of user experience on my first 2 days with it other than saying that it's not terrible!
I got my last keyboard in ~2011 when i was in much earlier days of being a PC enthusiast, over the years since then i've cut out all kinds of input lag to the point where it stuck out as being a laggy thing on my system. I wasn't quite sure how bad it was or that better options were available until that youtube video <3
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edit: I'm starting to think that while a range of actuation distances can be used for both, i think i'd prefer a 0.75mm shorter distance for gaming than for typing. This distance feels maybe fast enough to cause errors while typing at triple digit wpm or when i fat finger the keys (i just typed "io" instead of "i" because i brushed the O as i brought my finger down for the keystroke and was able to actuate it with very little stray force on the key) while not offering benefit for typing fast. My mistakes have been far fewer in number while gaming and a shorter actuation distance is definitely of some benefit there for making the keys feel a little bit shorter. Input lag is not really relevant for typing when we're talking about 10ms vs 20ms or even 30ms, any actuation distance is plenty fast enough but for something like osu it's of note.
I think currently:
MX red actuation distance - or higher, such as 1 - 2 mm - would be good for gaming
MX red actuation distance - or lower, such as 1.5 - 2.8 mm actuation - would be ideal for 100+ WPM typing without errors.
A higher actuation force may compensate somewhat for actuation distance, allowing for a lower actuation distance with a smaller risk of accidental keystrokes; MX red and MX speed are both very light switches at 45cn (about 46 grams of force)
A rubber dome actuates with like 70g of force after being pressed down 4mm so by comparison MX Red switches are extremely light and MX Speeds are even more so. 45cn at 2mm (red) or 1.2mm (speed) actuation is fast.
I don't think that the lightness/speed of the switches will be a major issue for me at the moment, i just don't want to downplay it because they're not just a straight up benefit and may be a dealbreaker for some people. I think that the same keyboard on MX red would likely be a safer bet but i wanted to try the Speeds to see if they'd work out for me, being willing to exchange the board if i had to.
Also full disclosure, i must also point out that part of the input lag in mice and keyboards can be due to a healthy margin for timing to prevent doubleclicks and similar issues - some of the very tightly tuned devices are more likely to develop issues with doubleclicking on the left mouse button or on certain keys etc. You can see this on some mice where there are firmware updates that add 5-7ms of input lag but "fix" doubleclick issues. The K70 has pretty great reviews, a lot of people really like it but they're not flawless - i'd consider it to be more at risk of issues than some other boards that are not lightning fast on the circuitry but i still consider that risk to be quite small. I bought from the vendor with the best returns policy (amazon) and i'm gonna see how it goes, everything works flawlessly so far. I just wanna make it known for full disclosure since there are a lot of little things on my mind when buying hardware and this was one of them.
Are you thinking of getting one?
Edit2: Just put the mic on w/ these switches, i'l have a vid up soon. Sounds quite different to mx browns and good!
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First vid! To correct a sync issue i have made the webcam video render 40ms earlier than everything else - i haven't touched the game video, game audio or webcam audio timing. If you're looking at the game then nothing has changed with the sync; if you're looking at the webcam, it's now in roughly the right timing relative to both of the audios because i'm compensating for the delay on it.
Later edit: Go watch Vid3 first! That one is really nice and is using a -5ms global offset.
Vid1:
My timing was terrible on the first bit so i skipped it on video timestamp. It's OD9 so it's not the strictest but it'll show when i'm more than a little bit off timing. I also cut the very end because it was going great and i ruined it in a stupid way lool :D
Vid 2:
^that click at 2:43 is one of the more satisfyingly synced ones that i've recorded
Those first two are at zero offset. Delaying the circles by 5ms (with a -5ms global offset) would improve the keystroke timing but mess up the hit sound timing by that much. I made that change below this line, so vid3 and after:
Vid3:
soooo nice omg
think i'l play on -5 global offset for a while (which means the song is 5 milliseconds before the circle) and bump my practice maps to OD9.5
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/PTfMqWT.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/e1fY7OF.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/PEb9ajq.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/NhkcQ03.jpg)
