Dimensity 8100 vs Snapdragon 888 vs Snapdragon 870: MediaTek's new SoC dominates in first CPU tests

A few days ago, MediaTek finally launched its latest sub-premium chipsets, the Dimensity 8000 and Dimensity 8100. The Dimensity 8100 will be more widely adopted of the two as it's more powerful and offers more features, and a thorough benchmark evaluation of the new MediaTek SoC has now surfaced, pitting it against rivals like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1, Snapdragon 888, and Snapdragon 870. The latter two, in particular, are the Dimensity 8100's closest competitors.

Starting with Geekbench, the Dimensity 8100 records a score of 3801 in the multi-core test and 924 in the single-core test. The Snapdragon 888 records 3753 and 1135 respectively, with that single-core advantage coming from the Qualcomm chip's Cortex X1 super core which the Dimensity 8100 lacks. The Snapdragon 870 earns scores of 3413 and 1012 respectively, also flexing Qualcomm's Prime Core in the single-core test. 

All three chipsets can be considered to have similar CPU performance, with the Dimensity 8100 leading in multi-core while the Qualcomm chips hold the advantage in single-core as a result of their custom cores. All of that changes in the power draw test, however. The Dimensity 8100 draws 6.9 W and 2.4 W during the multi-core and single-core tests respectively. The Snapdragon 888 draws 8.9 W and 4.0 W, while the Snapdragon 870 draws 7.9 W and 3.0 W respectively. 

Those numbers translate into better efficiency for the Dimensity 8100 across both the multi-core and single-core tests. Even more interestingly, it makes the Dimensity 8100 the most efficient chipset on the chart, ahead of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and even its own elder sibling, the Dimensity 9000. A combination of TSMC's 5 nm node and the lack of ARM's less-efficient new cores sees the Dimensity 8100 positioned as one of the most efficient premium chipsets of recent.

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