MediaTek Dimensity 7030 vs Apple M1 Pro vs MediaTek Dimensity 900

MediaTek Dimensity 7030

The Mediatek Dimensity 7030 is a mid-range ARM SoC (system-on-a-chip) that can be used in both smartphones and tablets (mainly Android). The SoC was introduced in September 2023.

It includes a 5G modem and supports the latest mobile phone standards in dual-SIM mode with both cards, so that surfing and phoning is possible via two different cards at the same time. The SoC integrates two ARM Cortex A78 cores with up to 2.5 GHz for demanding tasks and six low-power ARM Cortex A55 cores with clock speeds of up to 2 GHz.

The chip has an integrated sub-6 GHz and mmWave 5G modem including dual-SIM support that can reach a maximum download speed of up to 4.6 Gbps. Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) is supported as well as Bluetooth 5.2. 

The memory controller can cope with LPDDR4x or LPDDR5 working memory as well as UFS 3.1 mass storage. As an integrated graphics card, the SoC uses the Mali-G610 MP3, which supports displays with 144 Hz as well as HDR10+ Adaptive, HLG and Dolby Vision at a maximum resolution of 2,520 x 1,080 pixels.

Compared to the Dimensity 920, the CPU unit has the same clock speeds but a more modern instruction set, ARMv8.2-A. A new graphics unit is used and WiFi 6E is supported, as well as displays with up to 144 Hz.

The SoC is manufactured in a 6nm process.

Apple M1 Pro

The Apple M1 Pro is a System on a Chip (SoC) from Apple that is found in the late 2021 MacBook Pro 14 and 16-inch models. It offers  all 10 cores available in the chip divided in eight performance cores (P-cores with 600 - 3220 MHz) and two power-efficiency cores (E-cores with 600 - 2064 MHz). There is no Turbo Boost for single cores or short burst periods. The cores are similar to the cores in the Apple M1. The entry level model offers only 8 cores.

The big cores (codename Firestorm) offer 192 KB instruction cache, 128 KB data cache, and 24 MB shared L2 cache (up from 12 MB in the M1). The four efficiency cores (codename Icestorm) are a lot smaller and offer only 128 KB instruction cache, 64 KB data cache, and 4 MB shared cache. CPU and GPU can both use the 24 MB SLC (System Level Cache). The efficiency cores (E cluster) clock with 600 - 2064 MHz, the performance cores (P cluster) with 600 - 3228 MHz.

The unified memory (16 or 32 GB LPDDR5-6400) next to the chip is connected by a 256 bit memory controller (200 GB/s bandwidth) and can be used by the GPU and CPU.

The integrated graphics card in the M1 Pro offers all 16 cores.

Furthermore, the SoC integrates a fast 16 core neural engine, a secure enclave (e.g., for encryption), a unified memory architecture, Thunderbolt 4 controller, an ISP, and media de- and encoders (including ProRes).

The M1 Pro is manufactured in 5 nm at TSMC and integrates 33.7 billion transistors. The peak power consumption of the chip was advertised around 30W for CPU intensive tasks. In the Prime95 benchmark the chip uses in our tests (with a MBP16) 33.6W package power and 31W for the CPU part. In idle the SoC only reports 1W package power.

MediaTek Dimensity 900

The Mediatek Dimensity 900 is a fast mid-range SoC with an integrated 5G modem. It includes two fast ARM Cortex-A78 cores at up to 2.4 GHz and six power efficient Cortex-A55 cores at up to 2 GHz (Octa-Core with Heterogeneous Multi-Processing). Furthermore, the chip integrates a 4 core ARM Mali-G68 MC4 GPU, a Wi-fi 6 modem, a LPDDR4x memory controller, a AI processing unit  and video de- and encoding.

The Dimensity 900 is manufactured in the modern 6nm process and should be very power efficient.