Hi there, let’s talk MediaTek Dimensity 9400. This SoC is MediaTek’s latest flagship processor and it is the successor to last year’s Dimensity 9300.

It was officially announced on the 9th of October and has been tested using a generic MediaTek device. BBK electronics have already placed a large order for them and we’ll most likely be seeing them on the Vivo X200 and the Oppo Find X8.

Believe it or not, MediaTek was once as scrappy as Unisoc but the leadership of that company had a simple but lofty dream. To challenge and beat the world’s elite someday. They’re already beating Samsung’s Exynos and are seriously challenging Qualcomm and Apple at the very top of the flagship market.

They initially tried but failed soundly with the Helio X series. So they regrouped and rebranded with the Dimensity series, a move which was well received by fans and OEMs alike.

They finally broke onto the flagship scene with the Dimensity 9000 and have remained there ever since. The latest Dimensity 9400 is a move to extend their stay at the very top of the flagship market.

MediaTek Dimensity 9400

MediaTek Dimensity 9400 Key Specs

Now let’s look at the specs.

Specs
CPU cores
  • 1x Cortex X925 (3.63GHz)
  • 3x Cortex X4 (3.3GHz)
  • 4x Cortex A720 (2.4GHz)
GPU Mali G925 Immortalis MP12
Process 3nm TSMC
ISA ARMv9.2-A
Benchmarks
  • AnTuTu 10: 3,108,000
  • GeekBench 6: 2874/8990
RAM LPDDR5X (5333 MHz)
Storage UFS 4.0
ISP MediaTek Imagiq 1090 ISP
NPU MediaTek APU 890
Camera 320MP
Video 8K at 60FPS, 4K at 120FPS
Network MediaTek 5G Modem, LTE Cat 18, Sub-6GHz & mmWave 5G
Bluetooth Bluetooth 5.4
WiFi WiFi 7
Display MiraVision 1090

Performance and Gaming

The Dimensity 9400 comes armed with ARM’s latest and most powerful prime core, the Cortex X925 which runs at 3.63GHz. This prime core is supported by three Cortex X4 CPU cores from last year which act as the performance cores and run at 3.3GHz while there are four Cortex A720 CPU cores running at 2.4GHz which function as the battery efficiency cores.

For those who are not aware, performance cores are for the heavy tasks while the battery efficiency cores are for the light tasks. Performance cores provide power but drain batteries quickly. Battery efficiency cores don’t have that much processing power but help to conserve battery. The Prime cores provide a power boost for the big cores and are only used for the very heavy stuff.

For the GPUs, there’s an ARM Mali G925 Immortalis MP12 GPU which offers faster loading times for games, better raytracing, graphics rendering, colour depth and reduced battery consumption.

MediaTek are also promising their Hyper Engine gaming chip on board will help make gaming easier and faster. Something which I find hard to believe as MediaTek chips are poor at video game emulation. In addition, the Dimensity 9400 has support for LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.0 storage. Both of which are crazy fast.

When you put all of these together and use benchmarks to gauge the performance, you’ll get some incredible results.

On GeekBench 6, it gets up to almost 9,000 points and then hits 3.1 million on AnTuTu. MediaTek have been known to cheat at Benchmarks in the past so I’ll take these with a pinch of salt. The GeekBench score seems fair enough but that AnTuTu score seems rather suspicious. Almost like they’re trying to beat the 3 million score set by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4.

That being said, generally speaking, these are some very serious improvements over last year’s performance. This will be very good news to the emulation community, especially those who have been attempting to emulate PC games. Finally smartphones will have the processing power to tackle games like GTA V, the Witcher, Red Dead Redemption and co.

Multimedia

The Dimensity 9400 also packs MediaTek’s Imagiq 1090 and its inhouse MediaTek APU 890 NPU. These are designed to bring better AI performance on device to help with AI functions, camera support and others. The SoC supports up to 320MP cameras and up to 8K video.

Connectivity

Whilst MediaTek has refrained from specifically naming the NPU on board, it is clearly a 5G modem with support for Bluetooth 5.4 and WiFi 7.

Conclusion

So that’s mostly what you need to know about the MediaTek Dimensity 9400. As the days roll by, more information on this SoC will come to light.

What I’m looking forward to doing is having the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 go up against both the Dimensity 9400 and the Apple A18 Pro. Meanwhile Samsung are having serious problems with their new SoC that’s for another post. Cheers and stay safe.

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