What is the MediaTek Dimensity 9300? The flagship 2024 chipset explained

The MediaTek Dimensity 9300 is the company’s flagship-level smartphone chipset for 2024, boasting all the regular year-on-year upgrades alongside a completely new focus on Generative AI that should deliver a top-end smartphone experience.

But what exactly makes it so special? Here’s everything you need to know about the MediaTek Dimensity 9300, including all the key new features and specs. 

What is the MediaTek Dimensity 9300?

The MediaTek Dimensity 9300 is MediaTek’s flagship-level smartphone chip for 2024, boasting significant improvements on 2023’s top-end Dimensity 9200. 

The new chipset, like the flagship processor from competitor Qualcomm, focuses not only on year-on-year gains to CPU and GPU performance but also support for on-device Generative AI capabilities, making it a particularly interesting year for MediaTek’s flagship chipset. 

What’s new with the MediaTek Dimensity 9300?

The MediaTek Dimensity 9300 boasts not only significant year-on-year gains in the performance department, but also completely new features like on-device Generative AI support, new video features and support for high-end smartphone display tech. 

Let’s dive into what makes the Dimensity 9300 so special.  

GenAI support

Much like Qualcomm and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, MediaTek is going all-in on Generative AI support with the Dimensity 9300.

In fact, the chipset boasts a re-engineered NPU that offers a 2x boost to general AI performance and a 90% boost to Generative AI tasks, all while reducing overall power consumption by 45% compared to the Dimensity 9200. 

That means that the chipset is capable of sub-1 second stable diffusion, essentially AI image generation, and supports LLMs (large language models) with 7bn parameters at a rapid 20 TOPS (Tokens Per Second). However, it can go up to a whopping 33bn parameters with a reduced TOPS rate depending on the specifics of the smartphone in question. 

That’s a lot of numbers, but essentially means that Dimensity 9300-equipped phones will be able to run ChatGPT-style text generation, advanced image editing and other Generative AI tasks all on-device with no need for an internet connection, delivering a more secure and much faster Gen AI experience than we’ve seen thus far. 

‘All Big Core’ design

MediaTek has employed an all-new chipset design with the Dimensity 9300, going for what it’s calling an ‘All Big Core’ chip design with four ultra-large cores and four big cores, compared to the combination of one ultra-large, five big and two small cores from the competing Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. 

This, according to MediaTek, allows for impressive year-on-year gains with a 40% boost to the CPU, with 15% better performance at the same power as the Dimenisty 9200 and 33% less power consumption when matching its predecessor’s peak power. 

That also translates to a big boost to power efficiency, with a 10-13% reduction in general tasks like scrolling through TikTok and Instagram. 

That’s coupled with the 12-core ARM Immortalis-G720 GPU with headline features including a 46% boost to ray-tracing performance, console-level global illumination effects in mobile games along with a 46% boost to peak performance compared to the Dimensity 9200. 

Camera improvements

The boosted improvement and Gen AI support allow Dimensity 9300-powered devices to do some cool stuff in the camera department too – particularly when it comes to video capture. 

That includes always-on HDR previews for 4K video capture, giving you an accurate preview of the video you’re capturing, along with 3-mic HDR audio noise reduction that MediaTek claims can reduce up to 25km/h winds by up to 99%. 

There’s also 16-object layer segmentation for video, automatically recognising elements like buildings, faces and skylines, and applying different enhancements to each. 

Of course, it doesn’t mean that every Dimensity 9300-powered phone will boast these advanced camera capabilities – MediaTek provides the means, but it’s down to manufacturers to decide what to implement and how – but it’s certainly an interesting set of features for those interested in smartphone video capture. 

Display improvements

The Dimensity 9300 can also power new high-end display tech that’ll improve the viewing experience on flagship-level smartphones in 2024, with new support for the WQHD resolution at up to 180Hz, up from 120Hz for a 25% boost, along with 4K@120Hz for truly high-res, buttery smooth smartphone displays. 

It also supports Google’s new Ultra HDR display format introduced in Android 14 for an even better HDR viewing experience. 

There’s also a boost to foldable support, with the chipset’s dual active display support essentially allowing both the cover and internal displays to be used at once. It’s hard to imagine many scenarios where that’d be helpful, but smartphone manufacturers will get creative with the potential uses. 

As with the camera improvements, it doesn’t necessarily mean that every Dimensity 9300 device will have a 4K@120Hz display capable of Ultra HDR playback, but it does point towards the potential for impressive smartphone displays in 2024.