The Dimensity 9600 Pro is no doubt the star of the show at MediaTek’s launch event today, but the company also launched another interesting chip, the Dimensity 9600M.

The new chip is heading to the standard Vivo X500, while the Pro and Pro Max models get the more powerful 9600 Pro. That makes the 9600M the more affordable option in the new flagship lineup, and at first glance, it looks like a new chip for MediaTek’s 2026 phones. 

The silicon has an all-large-core CPU, a flagship GPU with neural network rendering, and a dual NPU setup. MediaTek even markets it as built on Dimensity 9600 Pro platform technologies, inheriting that chip’s graphics architecture. But the story looks different once you put MediaTek’s own spec sheets for the two chips side by side.

Dimensity 9600M is largely a refreshed Dimensity 9500

The Dimensity 9600M is essentially the Dimensity 9500 with a few small changes. It uses the same TSMC 3nm N3P process, and its performance is on par with last year’s chip, as most of what you get here isn’t brand new. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. 

The CPU setup includes one C1-Ultra core running at 4.21GHz with 2MB of L2 cache, three C1-Premium cores at 3.5GHz with 1MB of L2 cache each, and four C1-Pro cores at 2.7GHz with 512KB each. There’s also 16MB of L3 cache and 10MB of system cache — the exact same configuration as the Dimensity 9500.

The GPU follows the same pattern. Both chips use the Arm Mali-G1 Ultra MC12, and MediaTek’s spec sheet lists it identically for both. The NPU duties fall to the same APU 990 on both chips, including the compute-in-memory efficiency core MediaTek introduced with the 9500. And no changes in memory and storage either — LPDDR5X at 10667MHz and 4-lane UFS 4.1, respectively. 

Camera hardware tells the same story. The spec sheet caps out at a 320MP sensor and 8K60, 4K120 with EIS, and 4K60 cinematic video capture on both chips, matching the Imagiq-based imaging pipeline from the 9500.

What’s actually new

There are still a few changes on the Dimensity 9600M. MediaTek has upgraded its Dimensity Scheduling Engine to version 3.0, compared with the second-generation version on the Dimensity 9500. The newer scheduler should better manage CPU, GPU, and memory resources.

Gaming is another area where MediaTek is highlighting an improvement. The 9600M can reach frame rates of up to 185fps with neural network rendering. However, the actual frame interpolation hardware remains the same. It still uses MediaTek’s MRFC 3.0. 

The bigger changes come on the software side. The NPU now supports Gemini Nano 4 and Qwen 3.5 Omni 4B, while a new camera agent can provide photography suggestions based on what you’re shooting.

So while MediaTek gives the Dimensity 9600M a place in its newer 9600 series, the underlying hardware is still very close to the Dimensity 9500. The main changes are the newer scheduling system, small clock-speed increases, and some added AI features rather than a major hardware upgrade.

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(Source 1, 2)

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