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Exynos 2600 rival from MediaTek promises 120fps gaming with ray tracing
The Dimensity 9500 is a 3nm chip that will compete with Samsung's first 2nm chip, the Exynos 2600.
MediaTek has unveiled its latest flagship system-on-chip, the Dimensity 9500. Serving as the successor to last year's Dimensity 9400, the new chip is positioned to challenge Samsung's upcoming Exynos 2600, Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, and Apple's A19 Pro used in the iPhone 17 series.
MediaTek says the Dimensity 9500 delivers faster AI, CPU, and gaming performance while improving power efficiency.
Dimensity 9500 is a 3nm chip with massive AI performance improvements
CPU
The Dimensity 9500 is built on TSMC's latest 3nm N3P process. Continuing MediaTek's 'All Big Core' design for flagship parts, the chip adopts Arm's new Lumex CPU architecture. Configuration includes one Arm C1-Ultra core at 3.36 GHz, three Arm C1-Premium cores at 3.3 GHz, and four Arm C1-Pro cores at 2.4 GHz. The platform also integrates 10 MB of system-level cache.
Compared with the Dimensity 9400, MediaTek claims a 32% improvement in single-core speed and 17% in multi-core performance. The prime core is reportedly 55% more efficient at peak workloads, and overall multitasking efficiency is up to 30% better.
GPU
Graphics are handled by a 12-core Arm Mali-G1 Ultra MC12 GPU. MediaTek advertises 33% higher graphics performance and 42% better power efficiency for gaming. The GPU doubles the number of dedicated ray tracing units versus the previous generation, enabling up to 112% faster ray tracing performance in supported titles.
With frame interpolation, the GPU can deliver up to 120 fps gameplay while running ray tracing, bringing handheld performance closer to consoles. The GPU supports decoding 8K 60 fps 10-bit HDR video and encoding 8K 30 fps 10-bit HDR. It can drive WQHD+ displays at variable refresh rates up to 180 Hz, and MediaTek adds triple-port MIPI support to better optimize foldable and tri-fold designs.
RAM and storage
The Dimensity 9500 supports LPDDR5X memory at 10,667 MHz and UFS 4.1 storage.
Connectivity
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The chip includes Wi-Fi 7 with a Triple Band Triple Concurrency design for theoretical peak rates up to 7.3 Gbps. Bluetooth 6.0 is supported with a dual-engine architecture for link speeds up to 12 Mbps.
For positioning and navigation, the Dimensity 9500 supports multi-band GNSS: triple-band GPS (L1CA+L5+L1C), quad-band BeiDou (B1I+B1C+B2a+B2b), GLONASS (L1OF), triple-band Galileo (E1+E5a+E5b), dual-band QZSS (L1CA+L5), and dual-band NavIC (L5+L1). MediaTek highlights AI-assisted GNSS for about 20% better accuracy.
The integrated 5G modem handles sub-6 GHz networks in both SA and NSA modes with carrier aggregation up to 5CC-CA. MediaTek states AI-driven optimizations can improve 5G efficiency by up to 10% and reduce latency by as much as 50%. The modem supports theoretical peak sub-6 GHz downloads up to 7.4 Gbps and offers dual-SIM dual-active, dual-data connectivity.
Camera and ISP
MediaTek's Imagiq 1190 ISP inside the Dimensity 9500 supports sensors up to 320 MP and records HDR video up to 8K at 60 fps. It also enables 4K 120 fps HDR recording with electronic image stabilization and 4K portrait mode at 60 fps with HDR.
AI performance
The integrated NPU 990 targets agentic and generative AI tasks with a compute-in-memory architecture to boost energy efficiency. MediaTek claims the NPU delivers twice the AI throughput of the prior generation and doubles both integer and floating-point compute capabilities.
The NPU uses BitNet 1.58-bit processing for large models, reducing power draw by up to 33% during AI workloads. It supports 4K image generation and model contexts up to 128K tokens. MediaTek says the NPU is up to 100% faster on outputs from 3-billion-parameter LLMs while consuming up to 56% less peak energy.
Which phones will use the Dimensity 9500 chip?
Early adopters include OPPO's Find X9 Pro and Vivo's X300 series, expected to ship this month. Additional phone makers are likely to adopt the chipset across the next year.
By comparison, Samsung's Galaxy S26 Pro and Galaxy S26 Edge could deploy the Exynos 2600 — a 2nm chip from Samsung Foundry — in select regions. Other markets are expected to receive Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, a 3nm TSMC-made chip.
Later next year or in early 2027, Samsung may use a higher-clocked version of the Exynos 2600 in its flagship tablets, such as the Galaxy Tab S12 series.
Source: sammobile
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