MediaTek announced the Dimensity 9600 Pro on September 15, 2026, as its new flagship smartphone platform. The 2nm chip combines an eight-core all-big-core CPU, dual-NPU local AI hardware, LPDDR6 and UFS 5.0 support. MediaTek’s headline performance figures are ambitious, but they come from company testing on demo devices; the first independent numbers available come from an engineering sample rather than a retail phone.
What MediaTek announced on September 15
The Dimensity 9600 Pro is built on a 2nm process and uses an eight-core CPU arranged as 2+3+3. That means two Arm C2-Ultra cores work alongside two groups of three Arm C2-Pro cores. The highest clock speeds listed by MediaTek are 4.55 GHz for the C2-Ultra cores, 4.35 GHz for one C2-Pro group and 3.1 GHz for the other.
The platform also introduces the Arm Mali-G2 Ultra NX GPU, MediaTek’s NPU 1090 and a Super Efficient NPU 2.0. Memory support covers LPDDR6 10667 and LPDDR5X 10667, while storage support reaches UFS 5.0.
Dimensity 9500 vs. Dimensity 9600 Pro
The architectural changes are easier to see beside the previous flagship platform:
| Feature | Dimensity 9500 | Dimensity 9600 Pro |
| Manufacturing process | 3 nm | 2 nm |
| CPU layout | 1x C1-Ultra, 3x C1-Premium, 4x C1-Pro | 2x C2-Ultra, 3x C2-Pro, 3x C2-Pro |
| GPU | Arm Mali-G1 MC12 | Arm Mali-G2 Ultra NX |
| Storage | UFS 4.1 | UFS 5.0 |
| Memory support | LPDDR5X 10667 | LPDDR5X 10667 and LPDDR6 10667 |
| AI hardware | NPU 990 | NPU 1090 and Super Efficient NPU 2.0 |
The 2+3+3 design is not a conventional mix of performance and efficiency cores: all eight cores belong to Arm’s high-performance families. The two C2-Ultra cores handle the heaviest work, while the two C2-Pro groups provide additional performance at different clock speeds.
Performance, power and local AI
MediaTek claims up to 17% higher single-core performance, 15% higher multi-core performance and 61% lower multi-core power consumption than its previous-generation Dimensity flagship. Those figures are manufacturer results from demo-device testing, so they describe MediaTek’s test conditions rather than every phone that will use the chip.
The AI claims are similarly substantial. MediaTek says the NPU 1090 delivers up to 51% higher large-language-model prefill performance and 55% higher token generation per watt. The company also lists support for on-device models with up to 30 billion parameters. The Super Efficient NPU 2.0 is designed for lower-power, always-on AI workloads, with MediaTek claiming a 40% reduction in their power consumption.
That hardware can provide the foundation for local assistants, image processing and other generative features. The actual software experience will still depend on the phone maker, operating system, available memory and the applications enabled on each device. A Dimensity 9600 Pro phone does not automatically include a particular AI service.
For gaming, MediaTek claims up to 27% higher peak GPU performance, 24% lower power consumption at peak performance and 18% faster ray tracing. The company also describes native gameplay above 185 frames per second under supported conditions. Actual frame rates will depend on cooling, display resolution, game settings, firmware and the handset configuration.
Camera, video and connectivity depend on implementation
The Dimensity 9600 Pro supports camera sensors up to 200 megapixels, 8K60 video capture, 4K120 recording with electronic image stabilization and 4K240 slow motion. Its imaging platform also supports 4K60 HDR capture and 17-stop HDR video under supported implementation conditions.
Those are platform capabilities, not a promise that every phone will expose every mode. Camera sensors, lenses, thermal limits, storage speed and the manufacturer’s camera software all shape the final result. The same distinction applies to connectivity.
The modem supports 5G Advanced features, sub-6 GHz connectivity and 5CC downlink aggregation of up to 350 MHz. MediaTek lists downlink capability above 7.4 Gbps, Wi-Fi 7 at up to 7.3 Gbps and Bluetooth 6.2 at up to 12 Mbps. These are peak platform ratings, not guaranteed speeds on a carrier network.
The first benchmark is from engineering hardware
The first available hands-on evaluation used engineering samples and reported a Geekbench 6 multi-core score of 12,206 points. It also showed graphics and AI benchmark results, plus gameplay testing in titles including BGMI and Genshin Impact.
That result adds a useful early data point, but engineering hardware does not establish how a retail phone will perform over long gaming sessions. The final handset’s cooling system, firmware, battery and display can all change the experience. MediaTek’s percentage claims and the sample benchmark therefore answer different questions: one describes the company’s expected platform gains, while the other records a result from an early device.
Which phones will use the Dimensity 9600 Pro?
MediaTek said on September 15 that the first smartphones powered by the Dimensity 9600 Pro and Dimensity 9600M were expected to launch during the quarter. OPPO’s official newsroom listing identified an upcoming global Find X10 Pro Max debut with the Dimensity 9600 Pro.
The processor’s arrival is therefore clear; the retail experience will be decided phone by phone. That includes the memory configuration—LPDDR6 and LPDDR5X are both supported—the camera modes, the cooling hardware, the software features and the network capabilities enabled by each manufacturer.
