Dimensity 9600 Pro is MediaTek’s first 2 nm chip with over 33 billion transistors and 61 % lower power consumption

MediaTek officially unveiled the Dimensity 9600 Pro, its first chip made with the 2 nm process at TSMC. We could already estimate the performance from the leaked tests of the Vivo X500 Pro Max, but now the manufacturer has also released the official figures. The new chip has over 33 billion transistors, faster graphics, and the manufacturer is placing a strong emphasis on AI directly on the phone.

2 nm process and cores with up to 4,55 GHz

The move from 3 nm to 2 nm, according to the portal Gizmochina, brings a 14% performance increase and a 23% lower power consumption—before even architecture changes. The processor is built on new ARM cores in a 2+3+3 lineup: the two most powerful C2-Ultra cores run at 4.55 GHz, three C2 Pro cores at 4.35 GHz, and the other three at 3.10 GHz. All of them are performance cores—there are no efficiency cores on the chip.

MediaTek also increased the processor cache. The chip has 34,5 MB cache, and the second-level memory is 21 % more than with Dimensity 9500. In practice, shorter data waiting times can help especially under heavy loads, for example when gaming or processing video.

17 % faster single core and significantly lower power consumption

According to the manufacturer, the single core is 17% more powerful, and all cores together are 15% more powerful than on Dimensity 9500. The power figures are more interesting: the top-performance cores consume 37% less energy, and in multi-core mode, power drops by up to 61% at the same peak performance. For everyday users, that could be more important than raw performance, because it shows up in battery life and lower heat.

In the Geekbench 6.4 test, the new chip scored 4,276 points in the single-core test and 12,650 points in the multi-core test. Dimensity 9500 had 3,666 and 11,014 points in the same tests, so the measured results match what MediaTek promises. Leaked pre-production tests in the Vivo X500 Pro Max showed even higher multi-core scores, but those were not official.

Dimensity 9600 Pro is also the first mobile chip supporting LPDDR6 memory and UFS 5.0 storage. LPDDR6 memory is 33% faster than LPDDR5X, and UFS 5.0 doubles sequential read and write speeds compared to dual-channel UFS 4.0. Whether phone makers will actually take advantage of it will, of course, depend on the specific model.

Gaming graphics up to 185 fps and 4K video at 240 fps

The new G2-Ultra NX graphics, according to MediaTek, offer a 27% higher peak performance and, at the same performance level, 24% lower power consumption. Ray tracing is 18% faster, and games can run at up to 185 frames per second. The Imagiq 1290 image processor handles slowed-down 4K video at 240 fps, and hardware decoding of the H.266 format saves 23% energy compared to a software solution.

AI model with 30 billion parameters right on the phone

MediaTek puts the biggest emphasis on artificial intelligence. The chip has two neural units: a powerful NPU 1090 10th generation and an energy-saving unit for functions that run constantly in the background. The performance NPU processes input up to 51% faster, while the efficiency one consumes 40% less power. Thanks to this, the phone can run a MoE-type language model with up to 30 billion parameters completely locally, without connecting to the cloud.

The CPU, NPU, and memory are controlled by a unified system that MediaTek calls the Tianji architecture. Its job is to let large AI models and everyday apps run at the same time without stealing performance from each other.

The first phones will arrive as soon as next week

We won’t have to wait long for the first phones with the new chip. First up will be Vivo X500 Pro and X500 Pro Max, which Vivo will unveil on September 21, and a day later the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max will follow, as reported by the portal GSMArena. All three will first appear in China.

Good news for customers in Slovakia: phones with the predecessor Dimensity 9500, for example the Oppo Find X9 or Vivo X300, can be bought here too. However, the top models with the Pro Max label are usually reserved for the Chinese market, so whether and when Dimensity 9600 Pro will officially make it to European stores will only be shown by the global Viva and Oppa lineup.

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