MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro benchmarks are in: Middling performance gains but good efficiency boost

MediaTek unveiled its newest flagship chipset yesterday. The Dimensity 9600 Pro directly succeeds last year's Dimensity 9500 and is expected to feature on premium devices from Oppo, Vivo, Samsung, and Xiaomi over the course of the next year. The new chipset has also been tested on several benchmarks for a better idea of its performance capabilities.

These tests, by Chinese outlet Xiaobai's Tech Reviews, were done on MediaTe's prototype machine, as the Dimensity 9600 is not yet available on any consumer models. That's expected to change next week with the release of the Oppo Find X10 series in China, however. 

Pre-launch benchmarks indicated the MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro could arrive with around a 20% CPU performance uplift over the Dimensity 9500, and they seem to have been accurate. As tested, the Dimensity 9600 Pro scores 4,216 and 12,765 on Geekbench 6's single-core and multi-core tests. Those numbers represent about a 19% jump in CPU performance overall, which is decent but not especially impressive.

Efficiency is where the Dimensity 9600 Pro shines, however. The MediaTek chipset is the second of its kind to be built on TSMC's N2 node—after Apple's A20 Pro, of course—and it sees significant efficiency gains. To be exact, the Dimensity 9600 Pro's CPU appears to be up to 40% more efficient than the Dimensity 9500's on a perf-per-watt basis.

On the GPU side, the Dimensity 9600 Pro's Mali-G2 Ultra NX scores 9,245 on 3DMark's WildLife Extreme test, and 3,104 on the ray-tracing Solar Bay Extreme test. Both of those numbers are well above what last year's flagship chipsets could muster, and specifically about 15% higher than the Dimensity 9500. The Mali-G2 Ultra NX on the Dimensity 9600 Pro outperforms the Dimensity 9500's Mali-G1 MC12 but, interestingly, appears to be slightly less efficient than the last-gen SoC when both run at full throttle. It is, however, up to 50% more efficient when performing the same as its predecessor.

Buy the Dimensity 9400-powered Samsung Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra on Amazon US (curr. $1,149.50)