Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 vs Dimensity 9300 benchmarked

Qualcomm introduced its Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset in October, 2023 whereas MediaTek introduced its Dimensity 9300 in November. These chipsets are anticipated to energy a bunch of flagship telephones in 2024, however gadget makers are losing little time in adopting these processors.

We’ve already seen handsets with each the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Dimensity 9300 launching. We received our palms on the Snapdragon-toting REDMAGIC 9 Pro and the Dimensity-equipped vivo X100 Pro. This provides us the primary alternative to see how these new chipsets fare in opposition to one another in real-world gadgets.

The two processors have a couple of options in frequent, like a TSMC 4nm course of, Bluetooth 5.4, and assist for hardware-based ray tracing. But in any other case, you’re taking a look at two divergent approaches.

Qualcomm adopts a 1+5+2 CPU format, that includes one huge Cortex-X4 core, 5 medium Cortex-A720 cores, and two little Cortex-A520 cores. This means we’ve received yet one more medium core and one much less little core in comparison with the earlier flagship Snapdragon chip.

Qualcomm is amping up the clock pace right here too. All of those cores are working at the next frequency than their counterparts on the vanilla Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. That combo of upper clock pace plus newer CPU cores is fairly promising, on paper.

Meanwhile, the Dimensity 9300 eschews little cores fully in favor of 4 Cortex-X4 CPU cores and 4 medium Cortex-A720 cores. This is a really aggressive method at first look.

The Dimensity 9300 brings the next clock pace for the massive X4 core, however the three different X4 cores characteristic a diminished 2.85GHz clock pace according to the medium A715 cores seen within the Dimensity 9200. Meanwhile, the 4 Cortex-A720 medium cores listed below are clocked at simply 2GHz. In different phrases, MediaTek has a great deal of huge and medium cores, but it surely isn’t working all of them at full tilt, so we’re curious to see what this implies for multi-core workloads.

Qualcomm additionally brings its top-notch Adreno GPU and X75 modem, whereas MediaTek depends on its in-house modem and Arm’s Immortalis-G720 MC12 graphics.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 vs Dimensity 9300 benchmarks

Apple’s A17 Pro nonetheless beats each Android processors with regards to single-core and multi-core CPU efficiency. And the single-core benefit is especially huge. However, it’s a carefully fought contest for second place between the brand new Android chips.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 contained in the REDMAGIC 9 Pro has a slight edge with regards to single-core scores, whereas the Dimensity 9300 within the vivo 100 Pro delivers a detailed multi-core win. It’s shut sufficient that the outcomes may conceivably go both method with one other producer’s telephone.

You’d suppose that MediaTek’s chip would run away within the multi-core take a look at given using 4 heavy-lifting Cortex-X4 cores. But don’t neglect that solely one in all these cores is clocked above 3GHz (3.25GHz, to be exact), whereas the three different X4 cores max out at 2.85GHz. Combined with Qualcomm’s determination to supply extra cache and elevated clock speeds on six cores, and the Dimensity 9300 edges out the Snapdragon chip by solely a small margin.

GPU testing by way of 3DMark represents a big win for the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, although. The one-off Wild Life take a look at reveals a large ~26% benefit for the Snapdragon-toting REDMAGIC telephone. The Dimensity 9300 telephone nonetheless beats the iPhone 15 Pro and the Galaxy S23 Ultra, however there’s actually a gulf to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 handset.

It’s additionally attention-grabbing to notice that the Solar Bay ray tracing take a look at reveals an nearly ~21% benefit for Qualcomm and REDMAGIC. This is an about-turn in comparison with early this yr when the Dimensity 9200 was the massive winner in ray tracing benchmarks. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 was in a position to slender the hole in these checks because of updates, but it surely nonetheless lagged behind. So it looks as if the mix of a extra highly effective GPU plus optimizations is paying off big-time. Not that we’re seeing many cell video games utilizing ray tracing within the first place.

Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 vs Dimensity 9300 stress testing

Once-off benchmark checks solely give us an thought of peak efficiency. But who cares about Apple-beating speeds if it could possibly solely be sustained for 2 seconds? That’s why we put the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Dimensity 9300 telephones via some GPU stress testing. This is extra demanding than real-world gaming eventualities however nonetheless provides us an thought of what to anticipate in extraordinarily lengthy gaming classes, prolonged bouts of video recording, and different equally demanding persistent use instances. It’s regular to see some throttling in these checks, however which one throttles extra?

The REDMAGIC 9 Pro understandably dominates the Wild Life stress take a look at with the cooling fan enabled in efficiency mode. Disable the lively cooling, nonetheless, and we see main dips and peaks earlier than settling into some rock-solid efficiency from run 5 onwards. This remains to be a big drop total, representing 67% stability, and is definitely under peak Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Dimensity 9200 scores.

As huge of a drop because the REDMAGIC 9 Pro experiences, the vivo X100 Pro and Dimensity 9300 ship a much more unstable expertise over the size of the take a look at. The telephone solely maintained 44% stability by the tip, which means its efficiency dropped by effectively over half. What’s much more regarding is the truth that the Galaxy S23 Ultra, utilizing the older Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chip, finally managed to edge out the Dimensity handset. Even the Dimensity 9200-toting vivo X90 Pro is nipping at its successor’s heels.

Things aren’t any extra encouraging once we check out the Wild Life Extreme stress take a look at. This pushes the telephones much more, and the REDMAGIC telephone drops 30% of its efficiency out-of-the-box when going from the primary run to the second run. But it manages to keep up this efficiency all the best way to the tip, which is fairly respectable.

By comparability, the vivo X100 Pro began considerably behind the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 however grabbed the lead from the second run. The telephone solely held onto the lead till run seven, owing to a gradual decline that continued for the remainder of the take a look at. This is attention-grabbing, because it suggests the chip might maintain up fairly effectively in actual video games that aren’t as worrying as this take a look at. However, the Dimensity 9300 telephone in any other case yielded an abysmal 48.2% stability. This efficiency finally places it effectively under the Dimensity 9200 and Snapdragon 8 Gen 2’s last scores.

The Solar Bay ray tracing stress take a look at additionally sees equally poor efficiency from the MediaTek chip, leading to simply 47.4% stability. It finally ends up being crushed by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and Apple A17 Pro. In reality, the Dimensity 9200 manages to edge out its successor once more.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 contained in the REDMAGIC 9 Pro doesn’t fare significantly better, dropping efficiency by roughly a 3rd out-of-the-gate however nonetheless holding regular for the remainder of it to simply beat its rivals. Strangely sufficient, turning on the REDMAGIC’s cooling fan ends in rock-solid efficiency till run 17, when it registers a mammoth ~62% decline earlier than ending with a ~75% total drop. It looks as if not even a cooling fan can tame this dragon when pushed to absolute extremes.

It also needs to be famous that the REDMAGIC 9 Pro is a gaming telephone. So it’s potential that extra typical Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 telephones may see huge drops in peak benchmark scores owing to lower than ample cooling and extra conservative efficiency targets. The REDMAGIC telephone packs an array of passive cooling options in addition to a cooling fan, however the latter was solely activated when working checks in efficiency mode. Either method, the MediaTek Dimensity 9300 is the massive loser in stress testing. But the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 doesn’t emerge unscathed in any respect.

It’s clear that Qualcomm and MediaTek’s new chips are on a fair footing so far as CPU efficiency is worried, with the 2 buying and selling blows in single-core and multi-core benchmarks. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 takes a transparent lead within the GPU checks, although, however the Dimensity 9300 remains to be better of the remainder right here.

Stress testing is one other matter fully, because the Dimensity 9300-equipped vivo X100 Pro even loses to previous-generation silicon.  By distinction, the Snapdragon-equipped REDMAGIC 9 Pro has a transparent lead over older chipsets and the most recent Apple and MediaTek silicon — even when it’s not delivering a rock-solid expertise.

It’s value reiterating that the REDMAGIC handset is a gaming telephone with an array of passive cooling measures (along with the cooling fan in efficiency mode). We’ll probably see totally different outcomes when telephones just like the Galaxy S24 collection arrive. It’s additionally potential that the vivo X100 Pro’s cooling options are woefully insufficient moderately than the MediaTek chip being at fault. After all, we complained about warmth and efficiency when stress testing the X90 Pro earlier this yr. Whatever the case could also be, the primary Dimensity 9300-powered telephone is basically disappointing with regards to sustaining a heavy GPU workload.

The X100 Pro remains to be a compelling all-around premium flagship telephone, although, so it warrants consideration if you would like a flexible high-end gadget that ticks a great deal of bins. However, those that worth efficiency and gaming ought to control Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 telephones just like the REDMAGIC 9 Pro as a substitute. Dimensity 9300 telephones ought to nonetheless provide respectable efficiency and a very good expertise when taking part in superior video games, however a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 telephone will probably cope significantly better with future demanding titles.