Drivers

The driver for the Diamondback 3G was a bit of a letdown to be honest. I was expecting roughly the same extended driver suite as the one Razer supplies with the DeathAdder. Above you can see the main driver screen where you can control the essential properties of the mouse.


One of the things that I found odd was this driver doesn't feature the usual "Advanced" section that all the other Razer drivers do. The fact that you can only choose between 800 and 1800 DPI sensor resolution is a bit annoying for those using really low sensitivity or coming from a low DPI mouse. The rather limited "Advanced" section of the Razer Diamondback 3G makes it harder to configure the mouse to suit your exact needs which is a real shame.


The "Scroll Wheel" section of the driver is pretty standard. You can play around with the speed and function of the wheel.


When it comes to button assignment the Diamondback 3G driver is just as good as any of Razer's drivers. It lets you assign any type of function to all of the buttons, i.e. you can have universal scrolling on one of the side button or on-the-fly sensitivity control on the scroll wheel button.

Overall the driver for the Diamondback 3G was less featured than expected. I was hoping for a fully customized driver with all of the main performance aspects covered. Instead of a gaming grade driver all you get is an upgraded standard driver which is far from good, considering both price and quality of the mouse.

Performance

Since there isn't a benchmark program for mice the following is just my opinion of what type of performance this mouse can offer. I have tried to put the mouse through three likely scenarios in my game test. To test the capabilities of this mouse I started off by using a low sensitivity and then moved on up through medium to high sensitivity settings, carefully noting how the mouse performed and how it changes through the sensitivity scale. All of the tests were done with the CPL mousefix installed to remove mouse acceleration completely. In game mouse acceleration and smoothing was of course turned off through the entire test.

To begin with I started CounterStrike:Source which is a fast paced FPS game. I started off by using my normal sensitivity and the mouse did a great job at keeping track of my movement. It proved to be just as accurate as the DeathAdder and performed equally well at coping with fast hand movement. The only problem I had with the mouse is that it isn't wide enough for me to grip it properly.

A little problem that affects low sensitivity gamers the most is the lift-off distance. With just the standard mouse feet attached you have to lift the mouse relatively high up before it stops moving the cursor around. I tested this on the mats I had laying around and it seems that the problem is worst on black surfaces. I remember Razer trying to sort this problem out with firmware updates for the DeathAdder and they were somewhat successful at reducing the lift off distance. Maybe it's just a question of time before Razer apply the same fix to the Diamondback 3G's firmware.

After trying the mouse at low sensitivity I moved on to medium sensitivity and here the mouse was even better in my opinion due to the shape and size of the mouse. The fact that you have the sensor placed a little further to the front compared to the DeathAdder makes it feel a bit more responsive. At high sensitivity this mouse still feels quite balanced and responsive.

One of the things that I really liked about the Diamondback 3G are the Teflon feet. Because they are so soft they absorb a lot of the vibrations caused by movement over the surface. This makes the glide close to perfect on all the gaming surfaces I tested it on. The only problem with the mouse feet is that they are almost flush with the mouse and this means that the mouse sinks into the surface if you use it on a really soft mat.

I tried the mouse on all three sensitivity settings on the following mats: SteelSeries S&S, Razer Mantis Speed, NOIDpad Eclipse, Ratzpad, Func F10.S. And performance didn't change at all. Usually mice have a tendency to perform better on one specific mat due to its sensor, but the 3G infrared from Razer seems to perform well on almost any surface out there.
I also tested this mouse in Photoshop by doing some manual cropping and other operations that require accurate movement. I found that the Diamondback 3G is a nice mouse to work with because tracking was consistent and smooth. The cursor didn’t make any erratic movement at all and remained precise even when I turned up the sensitivity.