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MediaTek’s new smartphone chip sounds too good to be true

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Render of MediaTek Dimensity 8300 SoC.
MediaTek

Weeks after introducing a very promising flagship chip for Android phones that rivals Qualcomm’s best, MediaTek is taking the competition a notch lower. The latest from the Taiwanese company is the Dimensity 8300, which goes straight against the Snapdragon 7 Gen 3.

Overall, this seems like one of the best mid-tier processors MediaTek has offered in a long time, both in terms of inherent capabilities and generation-over-generation upgrades. The first wave of phones powered by the Dimensity 8300 will arrive by the end of this year.

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Notably, compared to Qualcomm’s visibly lazy mid-tier upgrade in the Snapdragon 7 series, the new chip from MediaTek brings meaningful improvements all across the board. Based on the same 4nm process as its predecessor, the Dimensity 8300 employs the new ARM V9-based Cortex cores.

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We are looking at an improved 4+4 cluster of Cortex A715 cores and an equal number of Cortex A510 cores. MediaTek is claiming a 20% boost in processing firepower and a healthy 30% jump in energy efficiency.

Representation of MediaTek Dimensity 8300 SoC on a phone.
MediaTek

For games and other demanding tasks, MediaTek has gone for the new Mali-G615 GPU that offers a huge 60% bump in raw graphics prowess while being 50% more frugal at power consumption.

This makes Qualcomm look like a laggard.

Of course, it’s AI season everywhere, and MediaTek isn’t shying away from it. The Dimensity 8300 is one of the first midrange processors that can run generation AI models with up to 10 billion parameters.

That figure matches what the flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 can handle, while MediaTek’s own Dimensity 9300 raises the bar up to 13 billion parameters (with further scope for scaling up).

Those AI capabilities come courtesy of the new APU 780 AI processor that can also handle Stable Diffusion workflows such as text-to-image generation. Based on benchmark tests, it is 3.3x more powerful and can handle generative AI tasks at an eight times quicker pace.

Poster with the MediaTek logo in orange.
Joe Maring / Digital Trends

The RAM module support has been upgraded to the higher frequency 8300 MB/s channel, up from the 6400 MB/s type, offering a 33% improvement. In real-life smartphone usage, you can expect snappier multitasking and the ability to retain more active instances in the background.

The storage standard has also gone up from UFS 3.1 to UFS 4.0 speeds, promising double the read and write speeds compared to the Dimensity 8200. The latest from MediaTek also promises improvements in cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity, with peak download speeds of up to 5.17Gbps over 5G and 2x bandwidth gain, respectively.

In the imaging department, the Dimensity 8300 will finally allow MediaTek-powered Android phones to record 4K HDR videos at 60 frames per second (fps), up from the 30 fps frame limit imposed by its predecessor. It would be interesting to see how this well-rounded chip stacks up against its Qualcomm rivals, but so far, MediaTek appears to be on a roll this year.

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Nadeem Sarwar
Nadeem Sarwar
Contributor
Nadeem is a tech journalist who started reading about cool smartphone tech out of curiosity and soon started writing…
MediaTek’s new chip just raised the bar for Android phones
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MediaTek is ready to enter the flagship Android phone race and challenge Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with its latest processor. The Taiwanese company’s latest weapon is the MediaTek Dimensity 9300, which is based on the 4nm process and packs a cluster of four top-tier ARM cores, putting in a position to race ahead via brute performance.
Compared to its direct rival from Qualcomm (which only has one large prime core), the MediaTek chip goes with an even more ambitious core configuration. There are four ARM Cortex-X4 cores, one of which goes up to 3.25 GHz, while the other three are clocked at 2.85 GHz. For less demanding tasks, there’s a cluster of Arm Cortex-A710 cores.
That large core cluster flexes its might on synthetic benchmarks, with MediaTek claiming nearly double the performance on the Geekbench 6 test and an astounding tally of over 213,000 on the AnTuTu platform. On gaming-centric tests such as GFXBench, the company claims an even bigger lead.
The Dimensity 9300 can support screens maxing out at a 180Hz refresh rate, while 4K panels can refresh at up to the 120Hz mark. On the connectivity front, Wi-Fi 7 is part of the package. There’s also a dedicated security chip in place for securely booting the OS.

On the AI-specific innovation front, MediaTek’s latest flagship mobile processor comes with an AI engine that doubles the AI performance at certain metrics while also consuming 45% less energy. Dubbed APU 790, MediaTek claims it is eight times faster than its predecessor and can produce visual media in less than a second using Stable Diffusion’s text-to-image models.
The company has also tweaked the memory architecture and claims that it can run large language models with up to 13 billion parameters, “with scalability up to 33 billion.” For comparison, Qualcomm’s latest and greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 can only run AI models with up to 10 billion parameters.
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On the graphics front, the Dimensity 9300 relies on the new 12-core Immortalis-G720 GPU, which is said to be 46% faster and 40% more frugal at power consumption. MediaTek is also banking on gaming-centric perks like hardware-accelerated ray tracing that are touted to deliver a 60 frames-per-second (fps) gaming experience with console-grade lighting effects.

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