The results suggest that Quest 3’s GPU will likely be at least twice as powerful as that used in Quest 2 and Pico 4.
Meta & Qualcomm recently announced “a broad multi-year strategic agreement” to build next-generation Snapdragon XR chipsets, involving the collaboration of both companies’ product and engineering teams. Last week, apparent Quest 3 schematics were leaked to YouTuber SadlyItsBradley (Brad Lynch), revealing key features including pancake lenses and a depth sensor. Lynch also claimed he was told by a source that the headset will use the Snapdragon XR2 Gen 2 chipset which has yet to be announced.
Current standalone headsets – including Quest 2, Pico 4, Vive Focus 3 and Lynx R1 – use the current XR2, which was recently retroactively labeled Gen 1 by Qualcomm. XR2 Gen 1 is a variant of the Snapdragon 865 smartphone chip that first shipped in early 2020. But Qualcomm has since followed the 865 lineup with two new generations, 888 and 8 Gen 1 – the company has changed the naming scheme with the release of the Latest model. Given Qualcomm’s typical timeline, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 should to be announced to the Snapdragon Summit next month and ship next year.
| Chipset Series | Treat | GPU model | TFLOPS | Used in |
| Snapdragon 821 | 14nm | Adreno 530 | 0.5 | oculus go |
| Snapdragon 835 | 10nm | Adreno 540 | 0.6 | Oculus Quest / Vive Focus / Pico G2 / Lenovo Mirage Solo |
| Snapdragon 845 | 10nm | Adrene 630 | 0.7 | Pico Neo 2 |
| Snapdragon 855 | 7nm | Adrene 640 | 0.9 | |
| Snapdragon 865 (XR2 Gen 1) | 7nm | Adreno 650 | 1.2 | Quest 2 / Vive Focus 3 / Pico Neo 3 / Pico 4 / Lynx R1 |
| Snapdragon 888 | 5nm | Adreno 660 | 1.7 | |
| Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 | 4nm | Adrene 730 | 2.2 | |
| Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (XR2 Gen 2) | 4nm | Adrene 740 | ??? | Quest 3? |
Qualcomm’s line of GPUs used in its chipsets are branded Adreno. The original Oculus Quest used the Adreno 540, with a performance of 0.6 teraflops. Quest 2 comes with a three-generation newer chipset featuring the Adreno 650, delivering twice the performance at 1.2 teraflops.
The more powerful GPU is used to drive the higher resolution and higher refresh rate display of Quest 2, as well as to improve the graphical fidelity of VR games. Many major Quest Store titles now only come out for Quest 2, because the original just isn’t powerful enough.
A finding from data miner Samulia suggests that Meta plans to achieve a similar jump in performance again with Quest 3.
30-37921-2 / CCA ASSY, SXR2230P PROJECT HALLIDAY, 1X BENCH DAUGHTER BOARD SKT DDR DTP PART QTY 1 NOS
FOC IC CP90-35514-91/SXR2230P 000-Y1, PSP1828, 2X 4KX4K MR, 4 2 OR, 4XLP5, A740, 10XMONO, HTP, 3
The XR2 Gen 1 model number is SXR2130P. But Samulia found recent import logs referring to a new chip with model number SXR2230P named “Project Halliday” – a likely reference to the fictional creator of the OASIS metaverse platform in Ready Player One. Changing the model number from 1 to 2 indicates that this is the XR2 Gen 2 that would be in Quest 3.
Some of the logs include the text ‘2x 4Kx4K‘ and ’10xMONO’, suggesting the chip can power headsets with two 4K displays and up to 10 cameras. But as SadleyItsBradley noticed, the text also lists “A740” – almost certainly referring to the Adreno 740 GPU which is expected to launch in Snapdragon 8 Gen 2.
The existing Adreno 730 already delivers 2.2 teraflops of performance, about 80% more than Quest 2’s Adreno 650. If the Adreno 740 delivers even a modest performance jump, Quest 3’s GPU will be at least twice as powerful than that of Quest 2. This would allow for more faithful graphics on higher resolution screens – and possibly even entirely new games that simply wouldn’t be possible on Quest 2.
To be clear though: these import logs indicate that the first test chips were sent to headset manufacturers, not mass production.
We have reached out to Qualcomm and Meta for any comments or context they would like to add.
#Quest #GPU #powerful #Quest #Pico