MediaTek launches Dimensity 9500s chip to compete with Snapdragon 8 Gen 5

Dimensity 9500s is expected to change the game in the smartphone segment with strong configuration and good price and be a direct competitor of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 in 2026.

Unlike traditional chips that are often divided into performance cores and power saving cores, Dimensity 9500s continues to pursue the All Big Core philosophy. MediaTek equips the new chip with the main Cortex-X925 processor core with a maximum clock speed of 3.73 GHz, combining Cortex-X and Cortex-A720 series cores.

To control heat from high-clocked cores, the company equips up to 19 MB of CPU cache and 10 MB of system cache. According to the manufacturer, this is the largest cache capacity in the current segment, helping the device reduce the frequency of accessing data from RAM, thereby lowering latency and saving battery when performing multitasking tasks or surfing the web.

Regarding graphics, the chip integrates the Arm Immortalis-G925 GPU with the option of 11 or 12 cores. The highlight is the appearance of Opacity Micromap (OMM) technology in addition to hardware ray tracing technology, helping images in the game have more accurate shadow and lighting effects.

To address overheating that causes performance loss, the chip uses Adaptive Gaming 3.0 technology, capable of maintaining a stable frame rate at 120 FPS with heavy games and up to 165 FPS with optimized e-sports games.

The artificial intelligence highlight on Dimensity 9500s lies in the NPU neural processor designed for AI Agent. In addition, with the Speculative Decoding+ feature, the chip can process large language models faster and more accurately. Instead of sending data to the cloud, the 9500s allows users to summarize documents, translate meetings and edit videos created right on the phone. Local processing not only increases response speed but also ensures user data privacy.

Technology experts say that with its launch in early 2026, MediaTek is putting great pressure on devices running Snapdragon 8 Gen 5, because Dimensity 9500s is expected to appear on high-end smartphones from Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo in the near future with more competitive prices.