Dimensity 9600 Pro is MediaTek’s first 2nm chip with over 33 billion transistors and 61% lower power consumption

MediaTek officially unveiled Dimensity 9600 Pro, its first chip made using a 2 nm process We could already estimate performance from the leaked tests of the Vivo X500 Pro Max,, but now the manufacturer has also published official figures. The new chip has over 33 billion transistors, faster graphics, and the manufacturer is placing major emphasis on artificial intelligence directly in the phone.

A 2 nm process and cores up to 4.55 GHz

The move from 3 nm to 2 nm, according to the portal Gizmochina, brings a 14% performance increase and a 23% lower power consumption—before even architecture changes. The processor is built on new ARM cores in a 2+3+3 lineup: the two most powerful C2-Ultra cores run at 4.55 GHz, three C2 Pro cores at 4.35 GHz, and the other three at 3.10 GHz. All of them are performance cores—there are no efficiency cores on the chip.

MediaTek also increased the processor’s cache—now the chip has 34.5 MB cache in total, and the second-level memory is 21% larger than on Dimensity 9500. In practice, less time waiting for data should help especially under heavy load—for example, while gaming or processing video.

A 17% faster single core and significantly lower power draw

According to the manufacturer, the single core is 17% more powerful, and all cores together are 15% more powerful than on Dimensity 9500. The power figures are more interesting: the top-performance cores consume 37% less energy, and in multi-core mode, power drops by up to 61% at the same peak performance. For everyday users, that could be more important than raw performance, because it shows up in battery life and lower heat.

In the Geekbench 6.4 test, the new chip scored 4,276 points in the single-core test and 12,650 points in the multi-core test. Dimensity 9500 had 3,666 and 11,014 points in the same tests, so the measured results match what MediaTek promises. Leaked pre-production tests in the Vivo X500 Pro Max showed even higher multi-core scores, but those were not official.

Dimensity 9600 Pro is also the first mobile chip supporting LPDDR6 memory and UFS 5.0 storage. LPDDR6 memory is 33% faster than LPDDR5X, and UFS 5.0 doubles sequential read and write speeds compared to dual-channel UFS 4.0. Whether phone makers will actually take advantage of it will, of course, depend on the specific model.

Gaming graphics up to 185 fps and 4K video at 240 fps

The new G2-Ultra NX graphics, according to MediaTek, offer a 27% higher peak performance and, at the same performance level, 24% lower power consumption. Ray tracing is 18% faster, and games can run at up to 185 frames per second. The Imagiq 1290 image processor handles slowed-down 4K video at 240 fps, and hardware decoding of the H.266 format saves 23% energy compared to a software solution.

An AI model with 30 billion parameters directly on the phone

MediaTek is placing the biggest emphasis on artificial intelligence. The chip includes two neural processing units: a powerful NPU 1090 from the 10th generation and an efficiency unit for functions that run constantly in the background. The powerful NPU is 51% faster when processing input, while the efficiency unit uses 40% less energy. Thanks to this, the phone can run a MoE language model with up to 30 billion parameters fully locally — without connecting to the cloud.

The CPU, NPU, and memory are controlled by a unified system that MediaTek calls the Tianji architecture. Its job is to let large AI models and everyday apps run at the same time without stealing performance from each other.

The first phones will arrive as soon as next week

We won’t have to wait long for the first phones with the new chip. First up will be Vivo X500 Pro and X500 Pro Max, which Vivo will unveil on September 21, and a day later the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max will follow, as reported by the portal GSMArena. All three will first appear in China.

Good news for Slovak customers: phones with the predecessor Dimensity 9500—such as the Oppo Find X9 or Vivo X300—can also be bought here. However, the top models with the Pro Max badge are usually reserved for the Chinese market, so whether and when Dimensity 9600 Pro will be officially available in European stores will only become clear with the global lineup from Vivo and Oppo.

Follow the China Planet website, subscribe to our monthly newsletter, and be sure to check out our Facebook page, the China Planet group, and join our Telegram, where we add the best offers and coupons from China every single day.