Image: Meta

Meta surprisingly increases the GPU clock of the Meta Quest 2, getting more performance from the two-year-old VR headset.

The Snapdragon XR2’s GPU now clocks at 525 instead of 490 MHz, increasing available GPU computing power by about 7%.

“We are excited about the impact this improvement will have on our app ecosystem, and early experiences strongly suggest that a 7% increase in GPU clocks will provide a better experience for you and your app community,” writes Meta on his developer blog. .

The announcement is quite surprising and, to my knowledge, has no precedent since the release of the first Meta Quest in May 2019.

What are the implications of the higher GPU clock speed?

The higher clock frequency does not necessarily mean that all VR apps will automatically run better. The fact that Meta is aimed at developers and not the gaming community probably has a reason.

As I understand it, the increase in clock speed mainly means that developers can now access 7% more GPU power for their VR applications and optimize them accordingly by adding better graphical effects or enabling resolution higher. Or they don’t change anything and the VR app in question gets a larger GPU buffer.

According to Meta, no integration is required from developers. “The dynamic sync system will automatically increase the frequency as it detects that your application would benefit from it,” Meta writes.

It’s unclear if developers should first enable the extra performance for their VR apps or if they get it automatically. In the first case, the improvement would not immediately affect VR applications and users. I hope Meta will clarify this soon.

The performance boost is likely coming with Update 49

At least for developers, the performance boost will be enabled automatically when they launch a VR app in the next Quest update. This is clear from the article.

Foveated rendering with Meta Quest Pro will also benefit from the increased GPU clock. “Increased GPU power will also automatically integrate with dynamic foveation if you have enabled it in your application. When compute demands increase, the GPU will maintain higher visual quality for as long as possible by going from 490 MHz to 525 MHz first, instead of increasing foveation,” writes Meta.

In the blog, the company encourages the developer community to optimize their VR applications for the new GPU synchronization and provides documentation.

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