MediaTek’s new Dimensity 9400 is all about performance

With a number of chipset makers moving to the 3nm architecture, smartphone performance is really expected to take off over the next few months. This is thanks to a lot of upcoming chipsets, and the latest in the lineup is the new MediaTek Dimensity 9400.

The chip comes a promise of power, something that relies on the all-big-core design that the company introduced last year. Here’s everything you need to know about the chip, and the phones it is expected to power.

MediaTek Dimensity 9400: What’s new and what to expect

The MediaTek Dimensity 9400 comprises of an octa-core design with all eight cores being performance cores of different capacities. This includes a single Cortex-X925, three Cortex-X4 cores and four Cortex-A720 cores.

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All these cores are based on the 3nm architecture – an upgrade from the 4nm one used on MediaTek’s last flagship chip – the Dimensity 9300.

What does all of this mean?

For those new to the subject, the nanometres in discussion here are the sizes of the semiconductor transistors used in these chipsets. In other words, these are the building blocks of any chipset, and the smaller they are in size, the more efficient the processing is.

So, even a small difference of 4nm to 3nm, could mean either better raw performance, or better thermals, or well, both. The switch to a 3nm architecture is also what makes the new Apple’s A18 Pro-powered iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max more powerful than last year’s A17 chips.

Coming back to the MediaTek Dimensity 9400, the new cores and design basically translate to a claimed 40 per cent boost in efficiency compared to the Dimensity 9300, which is a very big boost for a yearly. The company also claims 35 per cent faster single thread performance and 28 per cent faster multi-thread performance.

All this is clubbed with the 8th Gen MediaTek Immortalis G925 GPU, which again is expected to offer 41 per cent better GPU performance and 40 per cent better ray tracing performance in particular – the latter being great for any AAA-level games released on Android next year.

Apart from this the chip will support up to 8K 60fps video recording at 10-bit along with support for a new, faster 5G modem that can clock up to 7GB per second. There’s also support for tri-fold displays, which may be a more common sight over the next year.

MediaTek Dimensity 9400 AI performance

All newer phones and chips are boasting of AI, and the MediaTek Dimensity 9400 improves in this area too. The new chip is powered by an NPU that is 80 per cent faster in LLM (Large Language Module) performance, while being 35 per cent more power efficient.

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In addition to this, the chip will also feature native support for Google Gemini Nano and also bring in a new AI Agentic Engine framework that will better enable OEMs to deploy their own proprietary AI engines.

It isn’t clear what Android phones the new MediaTek Dimensity 9400 will power, but the company has revealed that the first phone with the chip will be launched in Q4 this year.