Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 vs MediaTek Dimensity 900 vs MediaTek Dimensity 8200-Ultra

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 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.