MediaTek has announced its latest mid-range chipset, the Dimensity 8400. While it is not the company’s flagship chipset, MediaTek has made quite a number of meaningful changes that could potentially shake up the mid-range smartphone market.
Shake up in design
One of the more popular chip design trends over the years is the big.LITTLE design. This involves the combination of both powerful “performance” cores, alongside a set of less powerful but more “efficient” cores. The idea is that the performance cores will kick in when it is needed. Other times, the efficient cores will run the show.
For example, if you’re just checking your emails or sending messages, there really isn’t a need for the phone to run at maximum power. This can result in issues like overheating and excessive battery drain. That’s when the efficiency cores come in.
The MediaTek Dimensity 8400 challenges that design. The company has essentially ditched the “little” cores in favor of an All-Big-Core design. This means that instead of the usual mix of performance and efficiency cores, MediaTek is going all-in with eight powerful Arm Cortex-A725 cores.
What does this mean for users? According to the company, the change in design will result in a 41% boost in multi-core performance over the Dimensity 8300. Interestingly enough, despite the pedal-to-the-metal approach, the company claims that it will cut peak power consumption by 44%.
The Dimensity 8400 also comes with an NPU to help with generative AI tasks and also packs an Arm Mali-G720 MC7 GPU. This is a massive upgrade over the Mali-G615 MC6 and is a 24% improvement in peak performance alongside a 42% increase in power efficiency.
The chipset also uses MediaTek’s Imagiq 1080 ISP that supports HDR video recordings at full zoom range. It features a 5G-Advanced modem that supports download speeds of up to 5.17Gbps, and offers support for WQHD+ displays with refresh rates of up to 144Hz.
More powerful mid-range phones
MediaTek has been making waves over the past few years. The company used to be known as the “budget” Qualcomm. Its chipsets were used by smartphone makers who wanted to make more affordable handsets. To a certain extent, that is still true. However, the company has made huge strides in its chip design. The new Dimensity 9400, for example, is capable of holding its own against Qualcomm’s latest offerings.
The MediaTek Dimensity 8400 is another great example of that. By enabling more powerful cores, the company is going for pure performance. This means that future mid-range handsets that utilize the chipset should be able to perform at higher levels. It also helps to close the gap between mid-range devices and flagship phones.
Obviously, a flagship phone will come with additional features to tempt customers. But if you don’t really need all the fancy new features and just want a powerful phone or tablet to play games or render videos on, the technological advances of the Dimensity 8400 could open the door to more affordable, yet powerful, devices.
