Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 vs MediaTek Dimensity 900 vs MediaTek Dimensity 8020

Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Mobile Platform is a high-end SoC for smartphones that was introduced in late 2021 and manufactured in 4 nm at Samsung. Integrates one “Prime Core” based on a ARM Cortex-X2 architecture clocked at up to 3 GHz. Three more performance cores are based on the Cortex-A710 but clocked up to 2.5 GHz. Furthermore, four energy saving cores are integrated that are based on the ARM Cortex-A510 architecture and clocked at up to 1.8 GHz. All cores can use the shared 6 MB level 3 cache.

Compared to the Snapdragon 888 (Plus), the CPU part gains 20% performance and 30% power savings according to Qualcomm. This means that the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 is the fastest CPU for Android based smartphones and should be positioned between the Apple A13 and A14 CPU.

The integrated AI Engine can offer up to 4x faster AI performance thanks to the bigger Tensor engine. The 18-Bit-Spectra-ISP also saw some big improvements and is now called Snapdragon Sight.

The integrated Adreno 730 offers a 30% graphics boost compared to the previous Adreno 660.

The integrated Snapdragon X65 5G modem is also new and offers faster transfer rates (up to 10 Gbps download and 3 Gbps upload). The FastConnect 6900 offers support for the current Wifi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.

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.

MediaTek Dimensity 8020

The MediaTek Dimensity 8020 is a ARM-based System-on-a-Chip (SoC) similar to the older Dimensity 1100. It was specifically designed for use in Android smartphones and falls into the mid-range category in terms of performance. It supports all current mobile network standards, including 5G with 2CC-CA (200MHz) and FDD+TDD.

The CPU consists of a total of eight cores divided into two clusters. One cluster has four ARM Cortex-A78 performance cores with speeds of up to 2.6 GHz, while the other cluster has four ARM Cortex-A55 power-efficient cores with speeds of up to 2.0 GHz. LPDDR4 RAM can be used as the memory, and it supports UFS 3.1 as the internal storage.

In terms of connectivity, it offers Dual-5G support, as well as Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.2.

The integrated graphics unit, ARM Mali-G77 MC9, can power displays with a resolution of up to 2560 x 1080 and a refresh rate of up to 144 Hz (possibly only for Full HD+).

The chip is manufactured by TSMC using the current 6nm process in the mid-range segment.