New Delhi: Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and MediaTek’s Dimensity 9600 Pro both arrived in September, and both are built on TSMC’s 2nm N2P process. Phone chips have sat on 3nm for three years, so this is a real jump. Qualcomm also changed the name again. “Extreme” is now part of it, which feels a bit like shouting.
Gizmochina ran both chips through Geekbench 7 and AnTuTu, using the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max for Qualcomm and the Vivo X500 Pro Max for MediaTek. Those are different phones with different cooling, so the numbers are a guide and nothing more.
Single-core goes to Snapdragon, and not narrowly: 3,163 against 2,600, roughly 21% ahead. Multi-core flips. The Dimensity scored 10,634 to Qualcomm’s 10,172, about 4% higher. Gizmochina’s own write-up gets muddled here and describes the Snapdragon as strong in multi-core, which the table contradicts. I’d trust the table.
AnTuTu lands near the same place. Snapdragon finished around 4.59 million and the Dimensity about 4.32 million, a gap of 6%. Qualcomm leads on CPU, memory and UX scores. MediaTek wins the GPU test by about 5%, which is a little odd given that Qualcomm is claiming a 44% GPU improvement over last year.
The design choices differ more than the scores do. Qualcomm keeps its 2+6 layout, pushes the prime cores to 5.0 GHz for the first time on a phone chip, and says it gets 13% more CPU performance and 37% better efficiency. On the graphics side it has put AI blocks inside the Adreno GPU itself, so neural rendering no longer has to go out to the NPU and back.
MediaTek went another way with a 2+3+3 CPU setup. Two C2-Ultra cores run at up to 4.55 GHz, three C2-Pro cores at 4.35 GHz and three at 3.1 GHz. The company claims 17% faster single-core and 15% faster multi-core, plus 61% better multi-core power efficiency. Its GPU stays on Arm’s standard pipeline, with the NPU 1090 acting as a hub that feeds the CPU, GPU and ISP.
Cameras are close. Both chips handle 8K/60fps and 4K/240fps slow motion. Qualcomm supports up to 320MP sensors and the APV codec, while MediaTek lists a 17EV imaging range and a 200MP ceiling. On connectivity Qualcomm is ahead on paper, with Wi-Fi 8 and a 14.8 Gbps modem against MediaTek’s Wi-Fi 7 and 7.4 Gbps.
Neither chip is in a phone you can easily buy yet. The Xiaomi and Vivo models are China-only for now. Some should go global soon, and Gizmochina expects dozens of devices next year. Real-world heat and battery tests on retail phones will say more than any of this.
