Apple M1 Pro vs MediaTek Dimensity 1300 vs MediaTek Dimensity 8200-Ultra

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 1300

The Mediatek Dimensity 1300 is a high-end SoC with an integrated 5G modem. It includes three CPU clusters. One fast ARM Cortex-A78 at up to 3 GHz with 2x L2 cache, 3 additional A78 with up to 2.6 GHz and for power efficiency four ARM Cortex-A55 cores at up to 2 GHz. The SoC looks to be identical to the older Dimensity 1200.

Furthermore, the chip integrates a 9 core ARM Mali-G77 MC9 GPU, a Wi-fi 6 modem (ax), a LPDDR4x memory controller (up to 5266Mbps), a AI processing unit (APU 3.0 with 6 cores) and video de- and encoding (including AV1).

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

MediaTek Dimensity 8200-Ultra

The MediaTek Dimensity 8200-Ultra is a upper mid-range ARM-based SoC (system-on-a-chip) that is manufactured using the modern 4 nm process. It was specially designed for use in Android smartphones and is in the upper class in terms of performance. It supports all current mobile communication standards, including 5G SA. 

The CPU works with a total of eight cores, which are divided into two clusters. In the first cluster, an ARM Cortex-A78 power core clocked at 3.1 GHz is joined by three further ARM Cortex-A78 power cores clocked at 3 GHz. In the second cluster, four ARM Cortex-A55 power cores operate at 2.0 GHz. LPDDR5 RAM can be used as RAM and UFS 3.1 is supported as internal memory. 

In terms of connectivity, dual 5G with a theoretical peak download speed of up to 4.7 GBit/s is available, as well as WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3.

The Mediatek Dimensity 8200-Ultra is a variant of the otherwise identical Mediatek Dimensity 8200 that has been specially customised for Xiaomi and features improvements to the camera ISP. An Imagiq 785 image processor is responsible for processing the camera data. Video recordings are supported with up to 4K at 60 fps. The CPU part of the older Dimensity 8100 is very similar and offers the same CPU and GPU cores.

The integrated ARM Mali-G610 MC6 graphics unit can power displays with a resolution of up to 2,960 x 1,440 pixels (WQHD+) and a refresh rate of up to 120 Hz. With Full HD+, even up to 180 Hz is possible.