Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5’s biggest rival is arriving next week

MediaTek announced on Weibo that it will launch its next-generation flagship Dimensity processor on September 22 at 2:00 PM GMT+8 (2:00 AM ET). The company didn’t reveal any more hints about what to expect, but it’s practically a given that this is the Dimensity 9500.

Nevertheless, popular leaker Digital Chat Station previously posted apparent Dimensity 9500 specs. The tipster claimed that we’re looking at a TSMC 3nm (N3P) chipset with one 4.21GHz “Travis” core (Arm C1-Ultra), three 3.5GHz “Alto” cores (ostensibly C1-Premium), and four 2.7GHz “Gelas” cores (C1-Pro). The leaker added that the processor has a Mali-G1 Ultra MC12 GPU, a 100 TOPS NPU, and support for SME2 capabilities.

There’s no official word on the first phones with the Dimensity 9500, but the tipster claims that the vivo X300 series will debut this chipset. Interestingly, Digital Chat Station adds that the X300 phones will have a custom V3 imaging chip integrated into the MediaTek processor. Otherwise, we’re also expecting OPPO’s Find X9 series and next year’s flagship Galaxy Tab S12 range to use the Dimensity chip.

We found that the Snapdragon 8 Elite outmuscled the Dimensity 9400 when it came to CPU performance. However, we thought the MediaTek chip delivered competitive GPU performance and cooler temperatures inside the OPPO Find X8 Pro. So don’t be surprised if we see similar results with these next-gen processors.

Meanwhile, MediaTek has also confirmed that it just taped out its first flagship processor using TSMC’s 2nm process. This chip is expected to be the Dimensity 9600, and MediaTek says mass production is set to take place by the end of next year. The firm says that the 2nm process improves performance by 18% at the same power consumption, while offering a 36% drop in power consumption at the same speed.