Dimensity 9400 vs Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 gaming: MediaTek SoC shines with 24% less power usage and much cooler operation

The MediaTek Dimensity 9400 is finally official after months of promising rumors. The Vivo X200 series and the Oppo Find X8 Pro are some of the first devices to utilize the new SoC. Per early testing of these phones, the Dimensity 9400 is a beast of a performer with considerable gains in both CPU and GPU tasks.

However, since the Dimensity 9400 features all big cores and no small cores for efficiency, there are legitimate concerns regarding the power consumption of the SoC, especially when it comes to the CPU. For instance, we reported last week that, although the Dimensity 9400 approaches the Apple A18 Pro in Geekbench 6, the SoC consumed more than 18 W vs only 12 W for the A18 Pro.

Fortunately, it seems that the heightened power consumption doesn’t affect the GPU on the Dimensity 9400, as a new gaming test conducted on the Vivo X200 Pro shows the efficiency advantage enjoyed by MediaTek’s SoC.

Dimensity 9400 gaming power consumption

When tested with Genshin Impact, the Dimensity 9400 inside the Vivo X200 Pro only consumed around 4.4 W. The Apple A18 Pro inside the iPhone 16 Pro essentially matched this figure with a consumption of 4.3 W. 

On the other hand, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 (Xiaomi 14 Ultra) and the Dimensity 9300 (Vivo X100S) consumed a whopping 5.8 and 5.4 W respectively. The power consumption of the overclocked Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 inside the Red Magic 9S Pro was even higher at 6.3 W.

To put these figures into perspective, the Dimensity 9400 shows a power consumption advantage of 18.5% vs the Dimensity 9300+ and an even more impressive 24% vs the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 of the Xiaomi 14 Ultra (Available on Amazon).

Dimensity 9400 thermal performance

With low power consumption, the Dimensity 9400 was also the coolest of the bunch, standing at only 43.2°C (109.76 F). Surprisingly, the iPhone 16 Pro ran considerably hotter at 46.1°C (115 F) even though the A18 Pro consumes less energy than the MediaTek chip. Apple claims that the iPhone 16 Pro has a new Graphene sheet to enhance cooling. Judging by the results of this particular test, Cupertino's cooling solution still lags behind the competition.

Finally, the figures posted by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Dimensity 9300+ devices were also much higher than the Vivo X200 Pro ranging from 45.8°C to 46.3°C (114.4 F to 115.3 F).

Summing it up, the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 seems like a champ in gaming, as the SoC not only brings a massive performance improvement over its predecessor but also does so more efficiently.