MediaTek has just introduced its latest smartphone silicon, and this one promises some big changes for midrange smartphones. The latest offering from the Taiwanese company is the Dimensity 8400 chip, and it will take on Qualcomm’s excellent Snapdragon 7 series Gen 3 processors.
The new MediaTek chipset, however, enters the fray with more firepower than we have ever seen in this segment. That’s because the Dimensity 8400 goes all-in on big cores and ditches efficiency cores, just like its flagship sibling, the Dimensity 9400.
Instead of the hybrid Arm Cortex-A715 + Arm Cortex-A510 design we got on the Dimensity 8300 series, the successor offers a cluster of eight next-gen Arm Cortex-A725 cores arranged in a 1+3+4 configuration.
The prime core here, in particular, touches a peak frequency of an impressive 3.25 GHz. The L3 cache has also grown by 50%, reaching the 6MB mark, which directly translates to quicker data fetching on the processing node, resulting in snappier performance.
The L2 and SLC cache has also received up to 100% capacity boost. On the graphics front, there’s a new GPU in town. The Dimensity 8400 embraces the Arm Mali-G720 MC7 GPU, which also unlocks 4K 60 frames-per-second (fps) encoding.
Coming to the performance gains, MediaTek is touting some impressive figures. The Dimensity 8400 is claimed to offer a 41% jump in raw multi-core tests while also drawing 44% less energy at peak performance compared to its predecessor. The new graphics engine, on the other hand, leapfrogs the Dimensity 8300 series by 24% while simultaneously being 40% more energy efficient. The cellular modem has received similar treatment, taking the peak 5G speeds all the way up to 5,71 Gbps.
Another crucial upgrade on the Dimensity 8400 is the AI stack, which gets an updated accelerator and the addition of MediaTek’s Dimensity Agentic AI Engine (DAE) for AI workflows. The latter had previously remained exclusive to the flagship tier.
The company is touting a 20% jump in AI operations and a similar boost in image generation, an up to 33% improvement in AI text generation, and an 18% gain in efficiency numbers.
The onboard ISP’s camera capabilities are also impressive, which bodes well for shoppers who seek reliable imaging output on a phone without paying top dollar for it. The Imagiq 1080 ISP offers perks such as HDR video recording across the entire zoom pipeline, 4K 60 fps video capture, in-sensor zoom with 100% phase detection auto-focus (PDAF), and 320MP composite capture, among others.
MediaTek says the first wave of phones equipped with its latest silicon will hit the shelves toward the end of the year. Separately, Xiaomi has confirmed that in China, it will pack its next Redmi Turbo device with a slightly faster variant called the Dimensity 8400 Ultra. It’s set for arrival early next year.
