MediaTek Dimensity 9200 packs Cortex-X3, mmWave 5G, Immortalis GPU with raytracing

Ben Schoon | Nov 8 2022 - 12:00 am PT

MediaTek has just debuted its latest flagship chip and set the bar for 2023 Android phones. The MediaTek Dimensity 9200 delivers Arm’s new Cortex X3 CPU, Immortalis GPU, and the company’s first flagship chip with mmWave 5G support.

The MediaTek Dimensity 9200 succeeds the Dimensity 9000 which launched last November. That chip was MediaTek’s biggest play to date at the flagship chip market, and the 9200 doubles down on that goal in some big ways.

Looking first at the CPU itself, the MediaTek Dimensity 9200 is the first chip for Android that uses Arm’s new Cortex-X3. Arm claims a 25% improvement in peak performance over the Cortex-X2, which is used in most of today’s mobile smartphone chips including the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. Google Tensor G2 uses two Cortex-X1 cores. Dimensity 9200 uses a single Cortex-X3 core (3.05GHz) alongside three Cortex-A715 cores (2.85GHz) and four Cortex-A510 cores (1.8GHz).

MediaTek says the Dimensity 9200 has a 12% bump on single-core performance and 10% on multi-core over the Dimensity 9000. However, a new thermal layer claims to drastically slow the time it takes for the chip to heat up. The company also claims a 25% reduction in power consumption compared to the Dimensity 9000.

The chipset is built on TSMC’s second-generation 4nm process and supports LPDDR5X memory up to 8533Mbps as well as faster UFS 4.0 storage.

The GPU is another huge area of improvement, with MediaTek shipping the Dimensity 9200 with Arm’s new Immortalis-G715 GPU. This unlocks raytracing support and, if some earlier benchmarks are to be believed, industry-leading graphics performance. MediaTek claims a 32% boost in performance and a 41% drop in power consumption compared to the Dimensity 9000.

Notably, the Dimensity 9000+ had a 5% boost over the 9000 in CPU performance and 10% on GPU.

The display specs this chip supports include FHD+ at up to 240Hz, WQHD at up to 144Hz, and 5K (two 2.5K displays) at up to 60Hz, and of course support for adaptive refresh rate.

Camera support on the Dimensity 9200 includes native sensor support for RGBW capture which can boost light capture up to 30%. The new Imagiq 890 image signal processor (ISP) also supports AI motion unblur for better action shots as well as capturing HDR video from multiple cameras at once. This is also used with the MediaTek APU 690 which claims to boost overall AI performance by around 35%.

Moving over to the networking side of things, the Dimensity 9200 is MediaTek’s first flagship chip with mmWave 5G support. The company previously integrated the faster 5G support into its Dimensity 1050 released earlier this year, but having it in this new flagship chip might present some major opportunities for the company in the US market, where carriers press for mmWave. There’s also support for Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3 with “studio-grade” wireless audio, and Bluetooth LE with Auracast.

MediaTek says the first smartphones using the Dimensity 9200 are set to arrive by the end of 2022, though specific brands and regions are unknown.