Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 vs MediaTek Dimensity 9000

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Mobile Platform is a high-end SoC for smartphones that was introduced in late 2021 and manufactured in 4 nm at Samsung. Integrates one “Prime Core” based on a ARM Cortex-X2 architecture clocked at up to 3 GHz. Three more performance cores are based on the Cortex-A710 but clocked up to 2.5 GHz. Furthermore, four energy saving cores are integrated that are based on the ARM Cortex-A510 architecture and clocked at up to 1.8 GHz. All cores can use the shared 6 MB level 3 cache.

Compared to the Snapdragon 888 (Plus), the CPU part gains 20% performance and 30% power savings according to Qualcomm. This means that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is the fastest CPU for Android based smartphones and should be positioned between the Apple A13 and A14 CPU.

The integrated AI Engine can offer up to 4x faster AI performance thanks to the bigger Tensor engine. The 18-Bit-Spectra-ISP also saw some big improvements and is now called Snapdragon Sight.

The integrated Adreno 730 offers a 30% graphics boost compared to the previous Adreno 660.

The integrated Snapdragon X65 5G modem is also new and offers faster transfer rates (up to 10 Gbps download and 3 Gbps upload). The FastConnect 6900 offers support for the current Wifi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.

MediaTek Dimensity 9000

The MediaTek Dimensity 9000 is a high-end SoC with an integrated 5G modem. It includes one fast Cortex-X2 core with up to 3 GHz, three more A710 cores with up to 2.85 GHz and four power efficiency cores (Cortex-A510) with upto 1.8 GHz. The SoC is manufactured in the new 4nm process at TSMC. All CPU cores can together use 8 MB of level 3 cache and 6 MB of System Level Cache (SLC).

The integrated quad channel memory controller supports LPDDR5X with 7500 Mbps. The integrated GPU is an ARM Mali-G710 MC10 (10 of the 16 possible cores).

The Dimensity 9000 is one of the first chips to be produced in the modern 4nm process at TSMC