Mediatek Dimensity 9400+ vs Mediatek Dimensity 9400e vs Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite

Mediatek Dimensity 9400+

The Mediatek Dimensity 9400 Plus is a higher-end octa-core SoC for Android tablets and smartphones that was launched on April 10, 2025. As such, it is said to feature one powerful Cortex-X925 core (up to 3.73 GHz), three Cortex-X4 cores (up to 3.3 GHz) and four efficient Cortex-A720 cores (up to 2.4 GHz) along with the dedicated 890 NPU and Immortalis-G925 MC12 iGPU. The older Dimensity 9400 features the same key components, their lower clock speeds being the differentiating factor.

A chip for flagship 2025 and 2026 products, the Dimensity comes with powerful navigation and networking capabilities, including Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 and other nice features such as support for three displays. It is built with TSMC's N3E process.

Performance

Given the clock speed improvement over the Dimensity 9400, its Geekbench multi-thread performance scores should be slightly higher than those of Apple's M1 and A18 Pro as well as Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite.

Long-term performance sustainability will depend greatly on how sound heat dissipation is in a particular tablet or smartphone.

Mediatek Dimensity 9400e

The MediaTek Dimensity 9400e is a fast mid-range SoC for smartphones and tablets based on Android.

The CPU no longer uses classic energy-saving cores, but two clusters of large cores. Although there is no ARM Cortex-X925 as in the Dimensity 9400, there are four ARM Cortex-X4 with up to 3.4 GHz and four ARM Cortex-A720 with up to 2 GHz.rgänger the level 3 and SLC cache, which now holds 22 MB (12 MB L3 + 10 MB system cache).

The integrated ARM Immortalis-G720 with 12 cores is responsible for graphics calculations.

The SoC is manufactured using the 4nm nanometer process at TSMC (third generation).

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite

The Snapdragon 8 Elite (SM8750-AB) is a high-end SoC for flagship smartphones and tablets in 2025 and the top product from the US manufacturer.

For the first time, Qualcomm is using CPU cores in smartphone SoCs that are not adapted ARM designs, but have their own ARM-based architecture: The manufacturer calls the processor part a second-generation Oryon CPU.

The previously used efficiency cores are no longer required and their task is taken over by the performance cores which, according to the manufacturer, are now flexible and efficient enough for this purpose.

There are a total of 2 prime cores with up to 4.32 GHz for complex tasks, which according to Qualcomm can also be overclocked at times. there are also 6 performance cores for less demanding tasks, which clock at up to 3.53 GHz.

Both processor clusters have 12 MB of L2 cache, which should offer low latency despite its size. Next up in the cache hirachy is a 8 MB SLC L3 cache and finally four 16 Bit LPDDR5x memory controllers to the main memory.

A new Adreno 830, which has also been redesigned, is used as the GPU. Thanks to the so-called "sliced architecture", it now offers three processing cores with a clock speed of up to 1.1 GHz.

Compared to the Snapdragon 8 Gen. 3, Qualcomm promises a processor speed advantage of up to 45% and similar efficiency gains. With the GPU, performance gains of up to 40% should be possible.

The focus for the 2025 flagship smartphones is also on AI. The new Hexagon NPU should offer 45% more performance compared to its predecessor and also work 45% more efficiently. There is also broad support for multimodal generative AI models.

The three ISPs have also been revised and are now called Spectra AI ISP. They can handle data from up to 3 48-megapixel cameras simultaneously. A resolution of up to 320 megapixels is possible with a single camera. Unlimited semantic segmentation is possible with 4K images, meaning that as many different layers and objects can be distinguished as there are in the image. This allows automatic photo optimization to be improved. In addition, the NPU now has direct access to the RAW data from the sensors for the first time.

The integrated Snapdragon X80 Modem-RF 5G system allows simultaneous transfers of 5G-mmWave and 5G-Sub6, enabling data rates of up to 10 GBit/s in download and up to 3.5 GBit/s in upload. The modem is also able to support all globally known 5G bands. Qualcomm's FastConnect 7900, which supports Bluetooth 6.0 and Wi-Fi 7, is responsible for local communication.

The SoC is manufactured at TSMC using the state of the art 3 nm process.