After months of leaks and rumors, the Dimensity 9600 series is finally here, and it brings a new chip that nobody was expecting: the Dimensity 9600M. MediaTek has also announced the Dimensity 9600 Pro as its most powerful mobile chipset, but skipped the regular Dimensity 9600.

If you have been wondering about the capabilities of new MediaTek’s high-end chips and where does the new Dimensity 9600M fit into the lineup, just keep reading. We’ll discuss them in detail here.

MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro: Raising the bar for high-end smartphone chips

The Dimensity 9600 Pro brings one of the biggest hardware upgrades in recent years, with a major focus on in-device AI capabilities. It’s built using the advanced 2nm node from TSMC. That alone is expected to give a 14% performance bump and a 23% cut in power consumption compared to the 3nm node used in last year’s Dimensity 9500.

Two Ultra cores for the first time in a MediaTek chip

The Pro chip comes with a completely new ‘2+3+3’ CPU design, featuring two Ultra cores for the first time in a MediaTek chip. That’s two 4.55GHz C2-Ultra cores, which are paired with three 4.35GHz C2-Pro cores and three 3.10GHz C2-Pro cores.

MediaTek says the new CPU delivers:

• 17% faster CPU single-core performance
• 15% faster CPU multi-core performance
• 37% more efficient CPU single-core power usage
• 61% more efficient CPU multi-core power usage

The chip giant presented the benchmark numbers at the launch event, as follows:

Geekbench v6.4 (single core)

• Dimensity 9600 Pro: 4,276 (+17%)
• Dimensity 9500: 3,666

Geekbench v6.4 (multi core)

• Dimensity 9600 Pro: 12,650 (+15%)
• Dimensity 9500: 11,014

The benchmark numbers for the Dimensity 9600 Pro are impressive, but a regular smartphone may not be able to match that. That’s because chip brands usually perform testing on a high-end device in an optimal environment to achieve the highest numbers, but a regular device has many limitations.

Upgraded GPU with neural graphics rendering

The Dimensity 9600 Pro uses an upgraded G2-Ultra NX GPU, the same in Xiaomi’s Oryon O3, to deliver 27% higher peak performance while cutting down power draw by 24% at peak performance. The ray tracking performance has also gone up by 18%.

MediaTek says the chip features an unique direct GPU–NPU sync to “deliver best-in-class flagship gaming performance and superior super-resolution quality and speed.” The Dimensity 9600 Pro offers PC-level neural graphics rendering and native 185+FPS gameplay support.

LPDDR6 + UFS 5.0 for the first time on a mobile chipset

The Dimensity 9600 Pro is the first mobile chip to support next-gen LPDDR6 memory and UFS 5.0 storage. The LPDDR6 delivers about 33% higher performance than LPDDR5X, and the UFS 5.0 brings twice the sequential read and write speeds you’d get from dual-channel UFS 4.0.

A big focus on AI performance

The Dimensity 9600 Pro promises industry-leading peak performance with exceptional power efficiency. It features a dual NPU architecture, combining the MediaTek NPU 1090 and Super Efficient NPU 2.0.

The 10th generation NPU 1090 powers most intense on-device generative and agentic workloads, while the Super Efficient NPU 2.0 is purpose built for always-on scheduling.

MediaTek claims the upgraded NPU 1090 delivers:

• 2x INT 4 computing power
• 55% greater Token generation per watt
• 51% faster LLM Prefill performance

The chip also supports Mixture of Experts (MoE) LLM with up to 30 billion parameters entirely on-device.

Camera receives notable upgrades

The new Imagiq 1290 ISP enables 4K slow-motion video recording at 240fps. Regular videos can be taken in up to 8K resolution at 60fps, and the 4K/60fps video recording supports content-aware semantic processing for true colour videography.

MediaTek Dimensity 9600M: A refreshed Dimensity 9500 with a few changes

The Dimensity 9600M isn’t very exciting, though. It’s essentially a refreshed version of last year’s Dimensity 9500 with a few changes. That means you’re getting the same 8-core CPU, featuring one C1-Ultra, three C1-Premium, and four C1-Pro cores. Even the clock speeds of all CPU cores remain unchanged.

No hardware upgrades from last year’s D9500, only minor software-level changes

The Mali-G1 Ultra MP12 GPU is also inherited from Dimensity 9500, plus the same hardware-level Frame Rate Converter (MRFC 3.0). However, the Dimensity 9600M relies on the newer neural network rendering to push frame rates up to 185fps in optimized titles.

Another change to the Dimensity 9600M is the upgraded scheduling engine. The new chip uses MediaTek’s third-generation scheduling engine, which should better manage CPU, GPU, and memory resources.

The NPU is also the same, APU 990, on both chips. However, the new chip brings software changes to enable support for Gemini Nano 4 and Qwen 3.5 Omni 4B. There’s also a new camera agent that provides real-time photography suggestions based on what you’re shooting.

No changes to the memory and storage — LPDDR5X at 10667MHz and 4-lane UFS 4.1. The camera hardware also remains the same, supporting up to 320MP sensor, 8K/60fps, 4K/120fps, and 4K/60fps cinematic video capture.

In conclusion, the Dimensity 9600 Pro brings significant hardware upgrades, including a newer CPU design, an upgraded GPU, LPDDR6 memory, UFS 5.0 storage, and more capable NPU with strong power efficiency. On the other hand, the Dimensity 9600M is just about minor software changes. On the hardware side, it borrows everything from last year’s Dimensity 9500.

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