18 Drivers, Firmware, and Polling
Drivers
- OpenTabletDriver is the current open-source, cross-platform driver most osu! players use. It replaced Hawku's TabletDriver, whose last release was v0.2.3. 84,85
- Lazer has tablet area adjustment built in; stable doesn't. 56
Tonehh’s take
- The 2020 driver fix and buying advice. Dated. His fix for a mouse that froze with drivers open edited a setting in Hawku's configuration, which OpenTabletDriver has replaced. He also warned in 2020 that a later revision of the XP-Pen G640 had a lower report rate (about 200 Hz instead of 266) and built-in smoothing, then reported the original revision back in production. Neither claim was re-checked for this book; check current reviews before buying. 22
Custom firmware (2026)
In 2026, community developers released custom firmware that raises the report rate of several Wacom tablets, reportedly with AI help in the reverse engineering. BTMC flashed four tablets on stream. Using OpenTabletDriver's debugger, he measured a stock CTL-472 at 133 Hz and flashed it to 200 Hz, took a CTL-4100 from 133 to 390 Hz, and pushed a CTH-480 to 700 Hz (position only, with no pen tip or buttons). He also took his Intuos Pro, rated at 300 Hz, to 1,000 Hz with pen, pressure, and buttons all working. 33
- Two sites. Shaveet's site lists firmware for the PTK-470, PTK-670, PTK-870, CTL-472, and CTL-672, plus toggles that switch off the tablet's own smoothing without flashing anything. The video description lists a second site covering the CTL-472, CTH-480, and CTL-4110. 86,87
- Trade-offs. Higher rates can cost pen pressure, side buttons, or tip clicks; edges may report slower than the center (about 450 Hz on one 1,000 Hz build); hover height can change; and faster reporting lets in more noise, so smoothing may need to be added back in the driver.
- Risk. Flashing firmware can void a warranty or brick the tablet. The developers reported one brick in about 59,000 flashes at the time; the sites describe backup and recovery steps. Follow the site's instructions exactly, and don't flash a model it doesn't list.
Fact check
- By the numbers. Polling adds, on average, half the report interval of delay. That's 3.8 ms at 133 Hz, 2.5 at 200, 1.3 at 390, 0.7 at 700, and 0.5 at 1,000. Going from 133 to 1,000 Hz saves about 3.3 ms on average and cuts the worst case from 7.5 ms to 1. See the polling table in Ch. 35.
- By the numbers. A 480 Hz monitor draws a new frame every 2.1 ms. The average gap between 700 and 1,000 Hz is 0.2 ms, far below what the screen can show, which fits BTMC finding the two indistinguishable on his 480 Hz display.
- Nuance. The developer says switching off the tablet's built-in smoothing saves about 8.3 ms, more than the entire polling gain. It wasn't independently measured here, but it suggests the smoothing toggle may matter more than the headline Hz. 33
- Confirmed. Lazer handles input on its own thread at about 1,000 Hz, separate from drawing, and caps its "Basically Unlimited" frame limiter at 1,000 Hz. 80,81
BTMC’s take
- This changes osu! forever; tablets are now endgame. Partly supported. The gain from a 133 Hz stock tablet is real, but the arithmetic shows diminishing returns past a few hundred Hz; the bigger win may be removing firmware smoothing. 33
- He could see and feel the difference from 133 to 200 Hz and beyond. Experience-based. One player, not blinded, and he flagged a warm-up bias in his own comparison himself.
- He plans to keep building an osu!-specific tablet. Experience-based. The software layer is largely solved by OpenTabletDriver and firmware is moving fast, which leaves hardware as the unexplored layer.
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