MediaTek’s New Dimensity 9500 has impressive camera, ray tracing capabilities

MediaTek is the world’s largest smartphone processor company by market share, but the company has typically played second fiddle to Qualcomm in the premium space. Nevertheless, our testing shows that the recent Dimensity 9400 puts up a great fight against the Snapdragon 8 Elite.

Now, MediaTek has revealed the next-generation Dimensity 9500 chipset, which will compete against the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. Here’s what to expect from the new processor.

Dimensity 9500 CPU

Hadlee Simons / Android Authority

The Snapdragon 8 Elite breached the 4GHz barrier last year, while the Dimensity 9400 Plus topped out at 3.73GHz. This time, the Dimensity 9500 has broken through the 4GHz wall as well. Expect one Arm C1-Ultra core clocked at 4.21GHz, three C1-Premium cores running at 3.5GHz, and four C1-Pro cores running at 2.7GHz.

The company also pairs each CPU core with the same amount of cache as last time, which means 2MB of L2 cache for the biggest core, 1MB for each Premium core, and 512KB for the Pro cores. We’ve still got 10MB of system-level cache this year, but MediaTek has hiked the L3 cache from 12MB to 16MB and doubled the L1 cache. Either way, you can expect 32% faster single-core performance and a more modest 16% multi-core gain. However, the company also says you can expect a 37% reduction in peak power usage and up to 55% lower power consumption for the Ultra core at peak performance. That’s good news for demanding gaming sessions, video editing jobs, and similar tasks, but there’s no word on power consumption improvements for less demanding use-cases.

The Dimensity 9500 CPU gets a major clock speed boost, as well as a key AI-related upgrade.

What’s perhaps more notable is that the Dimensity 9500 CPU offers support for SME2. This is an optional set of instructions and hardware for Arm’s latest CPU cores, which accelerate AI-based tasks. MediaTek says SME2 on its chipset results in 57% better object detection processing and 50% lower power consumption when running “encoding/decoding” models. We’ve asked MediaTek about other uses for SME2 on the Dimensity 9500 and will update the article when the company gets back to us.

Nevertheless, Arm previously told us that SME2 is already supported in a variety of AI frameworks, including its own Kleidi framework. So developers using these frameworks will automatically get a speed boost with these extensions. It’s worth noting that the Dimensity 9500’s NPU will still be the most powerful and efficient way to handle most AI tasks, but SME2 is nevertheless a handy addition for tasks that aren’t necessarily optimized for AI silicon.

The Dimensity 9500 also enjoys an upgraded GPU, as it gains Arm’s Mali G1-Ultra MC12 graphics hardware. The company says this enables 33% better peak performance, 42% better power efficiency, and 119% better ray tracing performance. By contrast, last year’s Dimensity 9400 offered up to 41% faster performance, up to 44% better power efficiency, and 40% better ray tracing than its predecessor. So the new chip isn’t bringing the biggest general performance leap, but we’re getting a giant upgrade for ray tracing and a broadly similar efficiency gain. The company also says we should expect more games with ray tracing later this year and in 2026.

MediaTek also claimed 120fps support in ray tracing, but the company didn’t clarify which games this figure applied to. A press note further suggests that this frame rate is achieved by “double frame rate interpolation,” suggesting a native frame rate of 60fps or lower. Otherwise, the company touted support for Unreal Engine 5.5/5.6 and Vulkan 1.4. The latter introduces Host Image Copy tech, which transfers image data via the CPU instead of the GPU to reduce stuttering during texture streaming and improve loading times in games.

Dimensity 9500: What about AI and camera capabilities?

It wouldn’t be a high-end smartphone processor without AI capabilities, and the Dimensity 9500 brings a few interesting improvements. The NPU 990 part offers a two-fold increase in performance, support for a 128,000 token window (versus 32,000 on the Dimensity 9400 and Tensor G5), and 4K image generation.

MediaTek adds that the NPU is divided into a “performance” core and a “flexible” core. However, the company also offers a so-called “super-efficient” NPU that’s apparently the industry’s first CIM-based (compute-in-memory) NPU. This is meant to permanently run small, low-power AI models on-device. The firm says you can expect power consumption to be reduced by 42% when running these small, low-power models via the super-efficient NPU.

Finally, the Dimensity 9500 supports BitNet 1-bit for large model processing, specifically supporting absolutely tiny 1.58-bit models on the NPU. MediaTek says this support means a 50% reduction in power consumption and reduced storage requirements for on-device AI processing.

Do you care more about the camera experience than AI capabilities? The Dimensity 9500 brings a few notable improvements in this regard. The company says it now offers RAW domain pre-processing, up to 200MP capture, and 4K/60fps portrait video. MediaTek says you can also expect “Android’s first” 4K/120fps Dolby Vision video capture with electronic stabilization.

OPPO recently announced that its upcoming Find X9 Pro will offer 200MP multi-frame processing, suggesting that MediaTek’s 200MP capabilities aren’t just for snapshots. Vivo has also confirmed that its upcoming X300 series will support 4K/60fps portrait video, beating the iPhone 17 line’s 4K/30fps option. Both OPPO and vivo’s upcoming handsets are set to be powered by the Dimensity 9500.

What else to know about the Dimensity 9500?

Other notable features include “Android-first” support for one-nit display brightness, UFS 4.1 four-lane support, 35% longer Bluetooth audio range, and AI enhancements to reduce 5G and Wi-Fi power consumption. The modem also supports 7.4Gbps downlink speeds, and apparently delivers 15% more bandwidth due to 5CC carrier aggregation.

MediaTek says flagship phones powered by the Dimensity 9500 will arrive in Q4 2025. OPPO and vivo have already started teasing the arrival of the X300 series and Find X9 series, respectively, in China. If it’s anything like the X200 series and Find X8 range, then global launches will follow before the end of the year.