Meta and Qualcomm recently announced “a broad, multi-year strategic agreement” (see article) for the manufacture of the next generation of chips Snapdragon XR. Last week, apparent patterns of the Meta Quest 3 were leaked by the youtuber SadlyItsBradley (Brad Lynch), revealing key features (see article). This week, this same youtuber provides more information about the chipsets Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 supposed to equip the Meta Quest 3, but which has still not been announced.
Current standalone headsets – including the Meta Quest 2, Pico 4, Vive Focus 3 and Lynx R1 – use the XR2 currentwhich has lately been retroactively labeled Gen 1 by Qualcomm. the XR2 Gen 1 is a variant of the chip Snapdragon 865 for smartphone which first shipped in early 2020.
Qualcomm has since followed the 865 line with two new generations, 888 and 8 Gen 1 – the company changed the naming scheme with the release of the latest model. Given the usual schedule of Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 should be announced during Snapdragon Summitnext month, and to be marketed next year.
A discovery of Samulia (data miner)suggests that Meta plans to leap forward similar in performance with the Meta Quest 3.
The model number of the XR2 Gen 1 is SXR2130Pthat of the Meta Quest Pro would be named SXR2150P. Samulia has found recent import logs referring to a new chip with the model number SXR2230P and bearing the code name “Project Halliday“ – a reference, not to the teen idol, but probably to the fictional creator of the platform OASIS in Ready Player Oneand, as everyone knows, Oasis is Good ! The model number change from 1 to 2 indicates that it is the XR2 Gen 2 rumored to equip our Meta Quest 3.
Some of these leaked journals include the text “2x 4Kx4K” and “10xMONO“, which suggests that the chip can power headsets with two 4K displays and up to 10 cameras.. But as rightly remarked SadleyItsBradley, the text also mentions ” A740 “, which almost certainly refers to the Adreno 740 GPU which should be launched in the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
L’Adreno 730 existing already offers performance of 2.2 teraflops, about 80% more than theAdreno 650 from Meta Quest 2. If theAdreno 740 delivers a performance boost, however modest, the GPU of the Meta Quest 3 would then be at least twice as powerful as its elder. This would allow on the one hand to obtain more faithful graphics on higher definition screens, and on the other hand, to be able thanks to our Quest Games Optimizer application to guarantee the optimization of almost all the games of the Meta Quest 1 & 2 for the next helmet of Metathus approaching a 4k definition (or even much more for the greediest).
To make things clear, these import reports indicate that the first test chips were sent to helmet manufacturers, not mass production. In addition, all this is to be taken with a grain of salt since nothing is official.
If the Meta Quest 2 still interests you, know that you can always afford it at the Fnac, Darty or Amazon for €449.99. You can also find good PCs for gamers on the site.
thanks to agaldian for reporting this information to us on our Discord.