I haven't noticed any differences in Win95.

What I do notices differences is using a serial mouse compared to a modern PS/2. It's so bad that I can't play with a serial mouse, meaning my gaming systems except my 386 only use PS/2-

I can't go back to serial mice either. I would say that my PS/2 mouse feels a little like a serial mouse in Win95, but not as bad.
If your 386 has an AWARD BIOS, even a version 4.20, you can modify the motherboard to use a PS/2 mouse. I have a AWARD-based 386 board I plan on doing this with.

With serial mice, lack of precision is more of a problem than speed. If looking for an optical solution, for DOS and low resolution Win9x gaming, the Q500 Digital optical mouse is quite sufficient.
PS/2 is better, of course - especially when the poll rate is adjusted properly. Unoffical Service Packs do that automatically for Win98SE, but one can also use PS/2 Rate Adjuster or similar utilities on any Win9x.

Jolaes76 wrote:

...one can also use PS/2 Rate Adjuster or similar utilities on any Win9x.

Is there any one utility you recommend for Win95 to accomplish this?

You could also download the intellimouse drivers and use those. They have a higher refresh rate than the standard ps2 mouse drivers (think the standard drivers have 40 frames per second, but intellmouse is more like 200 I think).

I ended up using a program called PS2Rate, found here: http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/ps2rate.html

It made a world of difference! I think Win95 was using a 40 Hz setting. When I upped it to 80 Hz, the results were remarkable. You can go all the way up to 200 Hz, but I was happy enough with 80 Hz. I suspect this is what WinNT4 must be at by default. Thank you Jolaes76!

Will using 200 Hz results in a noticable decrease in system/game performance on a 486?

I recently had something similar Mouse was choppy in XP but fine in NT4. I swapped the mouse a Wyse optical PS2 with an older Logetech USB with PS2 adaptor and all worked out, but maybe the above was the real issue?
Kinda glad I had the trouble though as when troubleshooting I stumbled across the copy the pre SP4 mouse driver back over NT4 install to get a working scroll wheel without installing the Intlicrap software.