Microsoft released the July 2023 update for Windows 11 last week, and in addition to the option to display seconds on the taskbar clock and the Snipping Tool now opening by default with the PrtSc key, there is another important improvement.

Microsoft developers interviewed by Windows Latest said that some of the updates are designed to reduce the stuttering previously associated with gaming mice with high polling rates.

"The July 2023 update will improve gaming performance for some. This [July 2023 update] will improve performance when using a mouse with a higher gaming report rate," an engineer is quoted as saying.

The problem appears to be due to a number of conflicts on the Windows input stack. With the myriad of devices connected to our gamers' machines, there are a large number of background processes and the demands on the input stack can devote a lot of system time to input processing, which can have a significant impact on the in-game experience.

This can manifest itself as periodic stuttering, no matter how powerful the actual hardware is.

If you are using a high DPI mouse with a polling rate of 1,000 Hz or higher, the PC must figure out what your rodent is doing 1,000 times per second.

The solution is to optimize Windows to take this kind of gaming mouse into account, which some would say is a bit slow considering there have been gaming mice with 1,000 Hz polling rates since 2005, but it is better than not doing it.

This optimization was first reported in a Windows Developer Blog post in May, which explained that its purpose was to "throttle and coalesce the background raw mouse listeners and cap their message rate, so that the processing time it takes to process an input request . to reduce the processing time it takes to process input requests."

"Prior to these changes, we observed significant stuttering in the Surface Laptop Studio with a 1000 Hz mouse, background listener testbed, and popular games. After the improvements, the same setup now provides a smooth, uninterrupted gaming experience and streamlines background listener input while maintaining a low-latency, high-precision input experience in games.

Therefore, if you are experiencing regular stuttering on your gaming PC, a simple Windows update may fix you and your high-performance gaming mouse. The update in question is Windows 11 KB5028185, available from the Windows Update screen.