Flagships at war: how MediaTek and Qualcomm are pushing mobile chips to the limit

[Redaktion]

The flagship chip market is heating up. MediaTek has officially launched its Dimensity 9500, boasting a 3 nm node, beefed-up GPU/NPU, and other major upgrades. Just after comes Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 with rumors of higher clock speeds, improved AI performance, and tighter power/thermal engineering. This rivalry isn't just specs on paper — it shapes which phones get made, how they behave under load, and ultimately what users can expect from their devices going forward.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Flagships-at-war-how-MediaTek-and-Qualcomm-are-pushing-mobile-chips-to-the-limit.1121658.0.html

[thunder]

The NPU needs to improve more than it currently is.  I don't think there are any major criticisms of the CPU, as its performance is comparable, but I expected more from the NPU, especially after the move to TSMC's 3nm process. Even considering the differences, for now I'd still choose Qualcomm.

[Max Power]

MediaTek is at a disadvantage in the USA as its radio stack still lacks support for mmWave support. I believe it doesn't natively support UWB either, requiring a separate chip to handle it.