MediaTek has just unveiled its latest flagship chip, the Dimensity 9500. This new chipset is shaking things up with what it calls an ‘All Big Core’ design, moving away from the traditional blend of powerful and efficiency cores. Instead, it packs an octa-core setup using the latest Arm CPU cores: a single super-fast C1-Ultra core clocked at a nippy 4.21GHz, three C1-Premium cores, and four C1-Pro cores.
The claims are certainly impressive, with MediaTek touting a 32% jump in single-core performance and a 17% boost in multi-core tasks compared to its predecessor. Perhaps more importantly for battery life, they say the top-tier core uses up to 55% less power at peak performance, and the whole chip is up to 30% more efficient when you’re multitasking.
On the graphics front, the Dimensity 9500 gets the new Arm Immortalis-G925 GPU. MediaTek promises a 33% leap in peak performance and a 42% improvement in power efficiency here. For gamers, the big news is a doubling of ray tracing units, which apparently translates to a massive 112% faster ray tracing performance. This should enable support for 120fps gaming with ray tracing effects, alongside compatibility with advanced game engine features like Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen and Nanite.
The image processing gets an upgrade too, with the new Imagiq 990 ISP capable of handling 200MP photos and capturing 4K 60fps portrait videos. For connectivity, the chip promises lower power consumption on both 5G and Wi-Fi, alongside smarter network selection powered by AI to reduce latency.
A major focus this generation is on AI. The chip features a ninth-generation NPU that MediaTek says has double the compute power. It introduces support for running more efficient large language models, leading to claims of 100% faster response times for on-device AI assistants and the ability to generate 4K images. The new NPU architecture is also designed to be far more frugal, cutting power consumption significantly when these AI tasks are running.
You won’t have to wait long to see this chip in action, as it’s expected to debut in devices like the Oppo Find X9 series and the Vivo X300 series next month.