This year’s flagship battle on the Android side has already begun. It is Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 vs Dimensity 9200 tonight.
Once upon a time, this wasn’t even a conversation at all. I mean, the only name one could mention in the Android flagship space besides Qualcomm was Samsung. This is barely 4 years ago in 2018 when MediaTek’s best SoC was most probably the Helio P70 and Qualcomm had Snapdragon 835.
Today MediaTek is comfortably turning up the tables in the flagship segment. Such growth and recovery in barely 4 years. It’s beyond impressive. So the Dimensity 9200 builds on the success of the Dimensity 9000 and 9000+. It is MediaTek’s flagship SoC for 2023 flagship phones. We do know that at some point next year, a Dimensity 9200+ would appear but that’ll be later.
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 on the other hand is Qualcomm’s attempt to not only move away from the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1’s disaster but also to consolidate the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1’s mild success. They have since reverted from Samsung’s 4nm to TSMC’s N4P process for this one and so far things are looking up. But what everyone wants to know is which SoC is better.
Before I go on, I would like to say that I do not work at Qualcomm or MediaTek, nor do I work at AnTuTu or Geekbench. All I have is the data at my fingertips and I can interpret them quite well. That is exactly what I plan to do.
Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 vs Dimensity 9200
Performance
| Specs | Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 | Dimensity 9200 |
|---|---|---|
| CPU |
|
|
| ISA | ARMv9 | ARMv9 |
| Fab | 4nm TSMC | 4nm TSMC |
The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 is an Octa (8) core SoC with a 1+2+2+3 CPU configuration. This is an entirely new CPU core configuration. The Dimensity 9200 is also an 8-core SoC with a more traditional 1+3+4 CPU configuration. When you look at this closely, you’ll see that the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 is faster and has one extra big A71* core.
This is important to note because when phones have to do heavy work like playing games or editing videos, it’s the big cores that come out to work. The extra core advantage should give the Snapdragon 8 Gen2 an advantage in heavy tasks that require multi-core CPU action.
For the light tasks, you can see that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 only has 3 small (A510) cores. The Dimensity 9200 has 4. The Dimensity 9200 has the advantage here, but those 3 Cortex A510s on the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 are faster. This should go some way in leveling the playing field.
It is also key to note that light tasks such as social media, calls, and light games do not require that much CPU power. So the three cores there should do okay.
GPU
| Specs | Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 | Dimensity 9200 |
|---|---|---|
| GPU | Adreno 740 | ARM Immortalis |
| Speed | 680MHz | 850MHz |
The GPU is also another important area to look at. Both SoC looks close in terms of GPU performance this year and MediaTek has closed the gap. From my research, the Immortalis GPU on the Dimensity 9200 beat the Adreno 740 in a GPU test.
There’s a GPU test known as the 1080p Manhattan off-screen test. Here are the scores as reported by the Digital Chat station and Notebook check:
- 1st – Immortalis (228FPS)
- 2nd – Adreno 740 (217FPS)
- 3rd – A16 GPU 5-core (195FPS)
Now I would treat these results with a bit of caution. This is because, in 2020, the Mali G76 MC4 beat the Adreno 618 in every benchmark test as well as raw specs. Now whilst this was true, I didn’t factor in the fact that optimization usually trumps raw GPU power a lot of the time.
The Adreno 618 supported and ran games slightly better than the Mali G76 MC4 even though the G76 MC4 was the better GPU. The simple reason was that game developers optimized games better for the Adreno 618.
So that should be something that one should keep an eye open for. Software (app and game) developers are very much on Qualcomm’s side at the moment.
So far…
So whilst the SD8 Gen2 leads tentatively in the CPU dept, the D9200 leads in the GPU dept. Tentatively as well.
Architecture and Fab process
Both SoCs are built using ARMv9 instruction set architecture on an enhanced 5nm process (N4P). This is very important to note, as this means that they’ll probably heat and consume battery at the same rate (efficiency).
Memory
| Specs | Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 | Dimensity 9200 |
|---|---|---|
| RAM | LPDDR5x | LPDDR5x |
| Speed | 4200MHz | 4266MHz |
| Bus | 4x 16-bit | 4x 16-bit |
| Size | 24GB | 24GB |
The memory supported by the SoC is very important because that’s where the CPU cores store data that they’re working on. Temporarily of course.
A slow memory or RAM would seriously hamper an SoC’s performance in the long run. As we can all clearly see, when it comes to RAM, both SoCs are tied with a slight speed advantage to the Dimensity 9200.
Benchmarks
Now that we have looked at all the performance specs and have examined them closely, let’s see how they translate to benchmark performance.
Geekbench
Now Geekbench is a test that only checks for CPU performance both individually (single core) and in a group (multi core).
| Specs | Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 | Dimensity 9200 |
|---|---|---|
| Single core | 2003 | 1960 |
| Multi core | 5347 | 5286 |
Both SoCs are basically tied when it comes to performance. There really is not much different between them.
AnTuTu
On AnTuTu that tests both CPUs, GPUs, and RAM performance…
| Specs | Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 | Dimensity 9200 |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 382143 | 380898 |
| GPU | 618652 | 520083 |
| RAM | 278662 | 287254 |
| UI | 247648 | 261487 |
| Total | 1537079 | 1450096 |
Just like with GeekBench 6, AnTuTu 10 also throws up a similarly close scorelines. This one is very tight.
So overall, when it comes to performance, both SoCs may be tied but always remember that Software support from developers is also very important. It would not be a surprise if they chose to side with Qualcomm. If they do, MediaTek’s win here would not matter as much.
Over to multimedia…
Multimedia
It is not a surprise that MediaTek traditionally has been all about performance and scarcely pays attention to the other aspects of the SoC. This year, however, MediaTek has decided to turn that narrative on its head.
MediaTek Dimensity 9000 brought support for up to a maximum 320MP camera resolution. This beats out the 200MP support offered by Qualcomm.
This, however, is purely specs padding as there are no 320MP cameras yet. So both SoCs will compete with 200MP cameras for the time being.
They are tied for storage support at UFS 4.0. They can also both record 8K videos at 30fps, although the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 can play 8K video back at 60fps. The Dimensity 9200 cannot do that. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 also supports displays of up to 2160p or 4K while the Dimensity 9200 maxes out at 1440p or QHD 2K.
Connectivity
Lastly, let’s look at connectivity. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 uses its own in-house Snapdragon X70 5G modem while the Dimensity 9200 uses MediaTek’s Helio M80 5G Modem.
Both modems offer nearly identical specifications such as 4G, 5G, WiFi 7, and Bluetooth 5.3, but MediaTek has not been transparent with its upload and download speeds so I’ll give it to Snapdragon here.
Summary
So let’s roll this over again and summarize
- Performance is a tie but developer support should go to Snapdragon
- Multimedia goes to Snapdragon
- Connectivity also goes to Snapdragon
According to Android Authority, MediaTek’s CEO has promised that unlike the Dimensity 9000, the Dimensity 9200 will be available for more phones outside of China and Asia. So they’re striking deals with companies to put Dimensity 9200 on their phones.
That notwithstanding, most OEMs are still be willing to give Qualcomm another try. If they bungle this one, then they’ll only have themselves to blame. MediaTek is waiting to pounce. Although I suspect that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 vs Dimensity 9200 debate may continue to rage for a while as there’s no straight winner.
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