MediaTek has recently announced its new with Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets. The 2021 Android flagships, such as Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra and the OnePlus 9, series (vanilla and Pro models) feature the Snapdragon 888 5G processor. However, MediaTek is gearing up to challenge the Snapdragon dominance in the global smartphone market.
The last flagship mobile chipset launched by MediaTek was Dimensity 1200. While the processor powers many smartphones, including the OnePlus Nord 2 and the Poco F3 GT, it falls short of the U and GPU performance provided by Qualcomm Snapdragon 870, Snapdragon 865 Plus, Samsung's Exynos 2100, and Google's in-house Tensor. To toughen the competition, Qualcomm has recently revealed the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset that will be used to power flagship Android smartphones in 2022. But is the Dimensity 9000 5G powerful enough to beat Snapdragon 8 Gen 1? The benchmark results of both the mobile chipsets provide a better picture.
Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 comes with a high-performance Cortex-X2 core (up to 3 GHz), three performance cores (up to 2.5 GHz), and four efficiency cores (up to 1.8 GHz). MediaTek also said in its press release that smartphones with Dimensity 9000 5G processors will be available in the market in the first quarter of 2022.
What Do The Benchmark Scores Say?
Antutu is one of the most popular smartphone benchmarking applications out there. It pushes the hardware in a smartphone to its extreme and provides benchmark scores which can then be compared to get a relative idea of performance. Upon comparing the Antutu 9 benchmark score of both the Dimensity 9000 5G and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chipset), securing a total score of 1,019,919. The Qualcomm chip falls behind by a minimal difference, securing a total score of 1,012,941. However, there is more to it than it seems.
As Antutu provides a detailed scoresheet for different smartphone components, the benchmark test reveals more information. As it turns out, the MediaTek Dimensity 9000 5G has a better U (about 12 percent faster than Snapdragon 8 Gen 1). However, the Snapdragon chipset is better at handling graphics (about eight percent faster than Dimensity 9000 5G). Additionally, both the MediaTek and the Qualcomm chips have undergone the Geekbench 5 test, and as it turns out, the Dimensity 9000 5G is a clear winner. Both the chips have been compared to Apple's A15 Bionic as well.
For reference, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 scores 1,248 points in the single-core test and 3,852 points in the multi-core test. On the other hand, Dimensity 9000 5G scores 1,277 points in the single-core test and 4,334 points in the multi-core test. There are a couple of tweaks that might be contributing to the overall performance of the Dimensity processor, which will power 2022 flagships. These factors include including a faster LPDDR5X memory frequency and higher processing power. While both the processors' overall benchmark scores are somewhat similar, MediaTek has successfully created a flagship mobile processor that is ready to compete with the best in the competition.
Source: MediaTek, Nanoreview.net,