Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite vs. MediaTek Dimensity 9400: the race is on

4 days ago

The flagship mobile silicon title has entered its adjacent phase, 1 that will dictate nan trajectory of Android hardware heading into 2025. Merely weeks aft MediaTek wowed america pinch nan Dimensity 9400 strategy connected a spot (SoC), Qualcomm besides pulled a astonishment pinch nan uncover of nan Snapdragon 8 Elite.

But this clip around, nan conflict is not arsenic straightforward. Where MediaTek is moving intimately pinch Arm and adopting its latest CPU and graphics innovations, Qualcomm has firmly put its religion successful civilization cores. These are nary mean cores, but a next-gen loop of nan aforesaid basal tech stack that powers Windows connected ARM laptops.

MediaTek’s Dimensity silicon has steadily gained mainstream adoption, astatine slightest among nan Chinese behemoths, owing to an awesome group of generation-over-generation improvements. In fact, nan institution has eclipsed Qualcomm connected galore occasions (and fronts) successful nan past mates of years, including nan important section of AI.

The first activity of phones powered by Qualcomm and MediaTek’s latest top-tier silicon will soon deed nan shelves. For souls eager to get a consciousness of really these top-of-the-line processors will perform, here’s a elaborate comparison.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite vs MediaTek Dimensity 9400: Specs

Specs Snapdragon 8 Elite MediaTek Dimensity 9400

Process	3nm	3nm
CPU	Qualcomm Oryon CPU 64-bit Architecture Prime core, up to 4.32 GHz Performance cores, up to 3.53 GHz	1x Arm Cortex-X925, up to 3.63 GHz 3x Arm Cortex-X4 4x Arm Cortex-A720 MediaTek NPU 890
GPU	Adreno graphics Support for Unreal Engine 5.3 moving Nanite connected smartphones Adreno Frame Motion Engine 2.1 Snapdragon Game Super Resolution Snapdragon Game Post-Processing Accelerator HDR gaming (10-bit colour depth, Rec. 2020 colour gamut) Snapdragon Shadow Denoiser API support: OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL 3.0 FP, Vulkan 1.3 Hardware-accelerated H.265, VP9, AV1 decoder HDR Playback Codec support for HDR10+, HDR10, HLG, and Dolby VisionSnapdragon Adaptive Game ConfigurationSupport for Unreal Engine Chaos Physics Engine	12-core Arm Immortalis-G925 MC12 MediaTek Frame Rate Converter MediaTek Adaptive Gaming Technology 3.0 HyperEngine Super Resolution Ray-tracing support Opacity Micromaps (OMM) MediaTel Adaptive Gaming Technology 3.0
Memory	Support for dual-channel LP-DDR5x memory, up to 5.3Gbps Memory Density: Up to 24GB	LPDDR5X RAM Peak representation wave of 10.6 GbpsSupport for UFS 4 storage
Display	On-Device Display Support: 4K @ 60Hz QHD+ @ 240Hz	WQHD+ 180Hz Tri-port MIPI for Tri-Fold Displays
Camera	Qualcomm Spectra AI Triple 18-bit ISP Limitless real-time Semantic Segmentation Up to 48-megapixel triple camera astatine 30 fps pinch Zero Shutter Lag Up to 108MP azygous camera astatine 30 fps pinch Zero Shutter Lag Up to 320MP photograph capture Slow-mo video seizure astatine 1080p @ 480 fps Massive Multi-Frame Noise Reduction pinch AI Real-time AI tegument and entity reside adjustments successful 4K60 fps	MediaTek Imagiq 1090 Peak camera sensor solution of 320MP Full-range HDR zoom + soft video zoom pinch sustained target focus 100X magnification photos Generative-AI Super Zoom for high-quality photograph capture 4K 60fps video capture Maximum 8K video recording 8K60, 10-bit Video Decode (HEVC/AVC/VP9/AV1) 8K30, 10-bit Video Encode (HEVC/AVC) 8K60, 8-bit HEVC Encode
Connectivity	Qualcomm FastConnect 7900 Wi-Fi 7 (Peak Speed: 5.8Gbps) X80 5G Modem-RF System Downlink: Up to 10Gbps Uplink: Up to 3.5Gbps Bluetooth 6.0 Integrated Ultra Wideband (UWB)	4nm Wi-Fi 7/Bluetooth chip Wi-Fi 7 (a/b/g/n/ac/ax/be) Triple set tripel concurrency pinch 7.3Gbps highest information rate 5.4 pinch dual Bluetooth engine 5G/4G Dual SIM Dual Active, Dual Data (up to 7Gbps sub-6GHz performance) MediaTek Xtra Range 3.0 MediaTek Wi-Fi Hybrid Power Saving

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite vs MediaTek Dimensity 9400: CPU

With nan Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm is going pinch a 2+6 halfway cluster format, pinch nan first 2 being premier cores while nan different six are capacity cores. Notably, location are nary ratio cores connected nan latest Qualcomm flagship silicon, while each cluster brings an awesome 12MB L2 cache.

Oryon cores wrong nan Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.

At nan helm are a mates of Oryon cores commanding a highest wave of 4.32GHz. These Oryon cores are typical for aggregate reasons. The Snapdragon 8 Elite is nan first Qualcomm silicon to usage nan second-gen Oryon cores, which win nan Kryos cores.

These first-gen Oryon cores are already powering nan Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips wrong nan Windows connected Arm machines, pinch a attraction connected section AI processing. It’s singular that Qualcomm is utilizing a new-generation CPU halfway creation connected a mobile level up of computing machines.

Now, it’s a uncommon occurrence that a chipmaker claims to topple Apple, particularly nan company’s mobile silicon fitted wrong iPhones. But pinch nan Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm is claiming to upend Apple’s A18 Pro that comes fitted wrong nan iPhone 16 Pro models. It’s besides rather absorbing to spot that contempt ditching ratio cores successful their entirety, nan latest and top from Qualcomm is still touting higher performance, arsenic good arsenic higher power ratio figures.

CPU creation layout for nan Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.

In fact, nan gains crossed nan committee correspond nan astir melodramatic displacement we’ve seen successful years. The premier Oryon core, which promises an awesome highest wave of 4.32 GHz, spearheads a monolithic 45% boost successful earthy CPU firepower compared to its predecessor.

Yet, astatine nan aforesaid time, Qualcomm is claiming a jump of 44% successful powerfulness efficiency. That translates into a higher artillery output contempt pushing nan silicon. Qualcomm claims a astir 27% powerfulness savings, which translates to astir 2.5 hours worthy of playing games.

MediaTek is nary slouch either. The Dimensity 9400 SoC, conscionable for illustration its Qualcomm counterpart, is besides based connected nan 3nm fabrication process. Similar to Qualcomm, MediaTek is besides serving an all-big-core design, skipping low-power cores successful their entirety.

The tri-core cluster connected nan Dimensity 9400 SoC is led by a premier halfway based connected Arm’s latest Cortex-X925 design, which itself commands a 36% leap successful single-core capacity and is based connected nan caller Arm v9.2 architecture. MediaTek besides claims a 15% boost successful instruction per timepiece (IPC) capacity compared to nan previous-gen Cortex-X platform.

Core creation for MediaTek Dimensity 9400 SoC.

Next, we person a cluster of 3 Arm Cortex-X4 capacity cores, sitting alongside 4 Arm Cortex-A720 cores. Collectively, they person helped raise nan multi-core output connected nan Dimensity 9400 SoC by 28%.

Now, Qualcomm isn’t nan only statement reaping nan benefits of a next-gen fabrication node. MediaTek says its caller silicon delivers a jump worthy 44% successful power efficiency, conscionable 4% short of what Qualcomm has achieved connected its rival mobile silicon.

Just for illustration Qualcomm, MediaTek has besides doubled nan L2 cache for its caller flagship, while besides lifting nan L3 cache weight by a 50% margin. Notably, MediaTek claims that contempt nan CPU being afloat occupied, exertion acold motorboat velocity has still gone up by a patient 35% margin.

Now, there’s 1 important difference. Where Qualcomm is relying much connected nan chops of its Hexagon neural processing portion (NPU) for AI processes, MediaTek (thanks to Arm’s approach) is much heavy reliant connected nan CPU for a mostly of AI tasks.

Boost successful gaming capacity for MediaTek Dimensity 9400 SoC.

“Arm unit we said to want to spot 80% to 90%of AI conclusion moving connected nan CPU cores,” notes The Register, adding that nan Armv9.2 Cortex cores natively connection AI acceleration astatine nan CPU level owing to nan instruction sets baked astatine their heart.

There is different use to this approach. Since AI acceleration is inherently offered astatine nan basal level connected Arm’s caller Cortex cores, third-party applications tin afloat pat into their potential, while an NPU-first attack (like that of Qualcomm) is geared toward first-party AI task execution.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite vs MediaTek Dimensity 9400: graphics

The biggest tie of Snapdragon 8 Elite silicon is undoubtedly nan Oryon CPU cores, but there’s thing typical brewing up successful nan graphics section arsenic well. Qualcomm notes that its premier silicon harnesses nan powerfulness of its first-ever Adreno GPU pinch sliced architecture.

The next-gen Adreno GPU allocates a dedicated representation conception to each graphics slice, which brings improvements successful earthy performance, arsenic good arsenic power efficiency. The numbers are not small, to put it mildly.

Adreno GPU gains connected Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.

Qualcomm claims that astatine AAA gaming, we are looking astatine up to 40% higher capacity and a 40% summation successful power efficiency. The Snapdragon 8 Elite besides marks nan first clip that an Adreno graphics motor is gaining support for Unreal Engine 5.3 Nanite and Unreal’s Chaos Physics Engine.

For gaming and related scenarios, Qualcomm is besides serving in-house goodies specified arsenic real-time hardware-accelerated ray tracing pinch world illumination, Snapdragon Game Super Resolution, Adreno Frame Motion Engine 2.1, Snapdragon Game Post Processing Accelerator, and protector denoiser, among others.

The over\arching theme, this clip around, is that Qualcomm is chasing console-tier in-game visuals, promising “film-quality 3D environments” and hyperrealistic visuals successful games for scenarios for illustration characteristic movement, building destructions, and more.

Gaming output connected Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.

MediaTek, connected nan different hand, is reaping nan benefits of Arm’s 12-core Immortalis-G925 GPU. Interestingly, nan institution is erstwhile again going toe-to-toe pinch nan benignant of gains Qualcomm has managed to achieve.

With nan Dimensity 9400, MediaTek is claiming a 41% jump successful earthy graphics performance, while simultaneously achieving a 44% boost successful powerfulness efficiency. The company, which was among nan first to tout hardware-accelerated ray tracing for mobile devices, says ray-tracing output has besides seen a 10% gain.

MediaTek is besides serving its ain group of gaming-centric goodies. For example, nan Opacity Micromaps (OMM) strategy fundamentally does ocular upscaling successful games, resulting successful dramatically sharper specifications specified arsenic foliage and realism successful mirrored surfaces. You tin cheque retired a little objection below.

Gaming acquisition promised by MediaTek Dimensity 9400 SoC.

Then we person a fistful of self-descriptive in-house systems specified arsenic MediaTek Frame Rate Converter, HyperEngine Super Resolution, and MediaTek Adaptive Gaming Technology 3.0 — each of which collectively committedness a sustained precocious frames-per-second (fps) gaming acquisition pinch improved power uptake and thermal management.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite vs MediaTek Dimensity 9400: camera

Let’s move nan comparison to camera capabilities. With nan Snapdragon 8 Elite, Qualcomm is shifting to a triple 18-bit AI ISP. One of nan biggest advantages of this image-processing motor is limitless layers of semantic segmentation for media capture. So far, Qualcomm silicon has only been capable to execute 12 layers of segmentation.

Image motor fitted connected nan Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.

The extremity consequence is simply a deeper knowing of objects successful nan frame, which opens nan doors to improved algorithmic processing to execute much meticulous and elaborate images. Other capabilities see ultra-lowlight video seizure and 1080p slo-mo video seizure astatine 480 fps framework rate.

For single-lens image capture, nan ISP supports 320MP image sensors and triple 48MP seizure pinch Zero Shutter Lag (ZSL) enabled. For 4K videos recorded astatine 60fps, nan Snapdragon 8 Elite’s ISP will execute on-device AI-assisted changes specified arsenic tweaking nan entity colour and fixing nan tegument tone.

Image value improvements courtesy of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.

Samsung is besides leveraging nan smarts of Qualcomm’s updated ISP pinch a strategy called Chrome QPD for its ISOCELL camera sensors. Qualcomm claims that nan full implementation improves nan “perceived” solution by a separator of 20%, while simultaneously boosting nan autofocus accuracy by a staggering 122% margin.

AI features connected Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.

The Imagiq 1090 ISP aboard nan Dimensity is besides impressive. This 1 besides matches nan single-lens 320MP seizure of its rival. MediaTek claims that nan Dimensity 9400 will besides alteration full-range HDR zoom without losing nan taxable focus.

Another notable capacity is generative AI ace zoom, which entails nan usage of AI to heighten nan value of long-range shots utilizing intelligent pixel prediction and fill. The caller Gen-AI Super Zoom tech will beryllium capable to weave its magic successful photos astatine up to 100x magnification level.

MediaTek’s Dimensity 9400 SoC powering a phone.

If you are capturing videos utilizing nan telephoto camera, nan next-gen ISP besides ensures that HDR is applied crossed nan full zoom range, which theoretically intends accordant and color-rich crisp videos.

Notably, nan institution adds that while capturing 4K 60fps videos, nan powerfulness uptake has been reduced by 14% this clip around. Now, depending connected nan retention status, users tin besides sprout 4K videos of up to 3 hours long successful 1 go.

MediaTek besides relies connected AI for segmentation, akin to Qualcomm, but nan erstwhile says it has managed to shrink nan powerfulness tie by up to 60% for nan caller Imagiq ISP.

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite vs MediaTek Dimensity 9400: AI

The adjacent awesome avenue for nan smartphone conflict is AI, aliases much specifically AI-driven experiences. Qualcomm’s multimodal AI motor was already tin of processing inputs successful aggregate formats, but now it tin understand nan world astir it, seen done a phone’s camera.

AI task workflow connected Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.

Apple has already rolled retired a characteristic called Visual Intelligence pinch nan latest iOS 18 update that deploys openAI’s connection exemplary to make consciousness of what’s appearing successful nan camera framework and besides picks up nan basal information.

The token model and discourse comprehension person besides expanded to nan grade that nan onboard AI tin reply personification queries by parsing full books and giving retired responses based connected nan learning material. These capabilities are already disposable to users of Google’s Gemini models.

As acold arsenic figures go, Qualcomm says nan latest loop of its Hexagon NPU delivers a 45% boost successful speeds, and besides offers an arsenic ample jump successful earthy capacity per watt. The in-house Qualcomm Sensing Hub will besides beryllium capable to make consciousness of activity discourse and connection actionable suggestions.

Qualcomm Sensing Hub wrong nan Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.

On nan AI broadside of things, Qualcomm is besides taking attraction of nan authenticity situation. It’s nary concealed that societal media has already been flooded pinch AI imagery, and successful a patient bunch of scenarios, they service a misleading intent alternatively of bolstering imaginative expression.

To that end, Qualcomm is extending nan Truepic pinch C2PA (Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity) tech to videos and audio files arsenic well, aft primitively introducing it for photos.

AI speech courtesy of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.

To put it simply, nan authenticity tech stack fundamentally creates what Qualcomm calls a “cryptographic seal” for media. The thought present is to adhd markers successful image metadata that will thief verify whether AI was utilized to manipulate an image, adding caller metadata-level specifications to coexist alongside accusation specified arsenic location, date, and time.

This AI authenticity certificate is transferable, which intends if AI-generated aliases AI-modified photos are shared, nan inheritance information will stay intact and will thief beryllium its authenticity.

AI capacity floor plan for Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite SoC.

The in-house NPU aboard nan MediaTek Dimensity 9400 is nan company’s 8th-generation model, and it is claimed to present an awesome 80% capacity summation successful ample connection exemplary (LLM) punctual performance. Tagging alongside nan jump successful capacity is simply a 35% summation successful nan ratio figures.

MediaTek besides mentions that nan updated NPU is nan first chipset targeted astatine mobile platforms to connection on-device LoRA training. For nan unaware, Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) is fundamentally a method that allows nan deployment of AI models, but successful a condensed format pinch less (but selected) parameters, which yet reduces nan exemplary size and nan accent connected section resources.

MediaTek was already among nan first smartphone brands to connection on-device image generation. Now, nan institution is upping nan ante pinch nan Dimensity 9400 SoC by allowing on-device video generation. Do support successful mind that, truthful far, nary awesome AI players — deliberation OpenAI, Google, aliases Meta — person released a commercialized merchandise that allows AI video generation.

Boost successful AI capacity for MediaTek Dimensity 9400 SoC.

The biggest AI promise served atop nan Dimensity 9400 platter is support for what MediaTek refers to arsenic Agentic AI. At nan astir basal level, it’s an AI strategy that has a definite grade of autonomy and is tin of performing multistep tasks, alternatively of relying connected personification inputs each clip to grip a task.

The institution claims these agents tin construe nan discourse of a user’s action, and based connected what is inferred, it would supply suggestions and moreover return a nonstop measurement connected behalf of smartphone users. Think of it arsenic creating a shortcut, but letting an AI grip it utilizing earthy connection commands and activity comprehension.

Agentic AI speech connected MediaTek Dimensity 9400 SoC.

MediaTek notes that it is moving pinch developers truthful that these Agentic AI devices tin beryllium integrated wrong third-party apps arsenic well. The NPU besides doubles nan diffusion procreation pace, and happens to beryllium a world’s first successful position of offering a dedicated Agentic AI motor to developers.

Real-world tests forthcoming

It is difficult to judge who is going to triumph nan smartphone silicon title starring into 2025, and surely not without a side-by-side comparison. To a definite extent, it whitethorn not moreover matter fixed nan levels of capacity each spot is touching, which are dramatically higher than an mean smartphone personification would ever request to pat into.

But flashy presentations don’t ever construe into real-world experience, and what matters moreover much is conscionable really useful and applicable nan caller group of advancements will beryllium to beryllium for an mean smartphone user.

Official rendering of nan Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite chip.

Qualcomm is reaching an altogether different level of capacity crossed nan board, beryllium it processing firepower aliases camera capabilities. MediaTek isn’t excessively acold down successful nan title and moreover surpasses Qualcomm successful a fewer areas, particularly AI capabilities.

The first activity of phones powered by Qualcomm and MediaTek’s top-tier silicon is conscionable astir to deed nan shelves. We will soon put together a broad comparison of really these 2 fare erstwhile pitted against each different successful benchmarks, arsenic good arsenic successful real-world capacity tests, truthful enactment tuned for that.