MediaTek's newest flagship chip could make Galaxy Tab S13 a gaming beast

Samsung was the world's first brand to debut a 2nm smartphone processor, the Exynos 2600. Last week, Apple unveiled its 2nm chip, the A20 Pro, and now, MediaTek has announced two high-end smartphone chips: the Dimensity 9600M and the Dimensity 9600 Pro.

The Dimensity 9600 Pro is a 2nm chip, while the Dimensity 9600M is a 3nm chip.

In the past few generations, Samsung has used MediaTek's flagship chips for its high-end Galaxy Tab S series tablets. So, we expect the company to use the Dimensity 9600 Pro chip to power the Galaxy Tab S13 and the Galaxy Tab S13 Ultra in 2027.

The Dimensity 9600 Pro has an octa-core CPU featuring two Arm C2-Ultra cores clocked at 4.55GHz, three Arm C2-Pro cores running at 4.35GHz, and three more C2-Pro cores that can reach a maximum frequency of 3.1GHz. The chip also features Arm's Mali-G2 Ultra NX GPU, which has 12 cores.

The chip has 34.5MB of total cache (L2, L3, and SLC) shared across the CPU, GPU, and NPU. It is compatible with LPDDR6 RAM (10667MHz) and UFS 5.0 storage.

MediaTek claims that its new flagship chip's CPU offers 17% better single-core performance and 15% better multi-core performance than the Dimensity 9500, which is used in the Galaxy Tab S12 series. Power consumption across all cores can be up to 61% less, while the power consumption of the ultra-large CPU cores can be around 37% lower for the same tasks.

The GPU uses MediaTek's Neural Graphics Architecture for improved graphics performance. It has a third-generation ray-tracing engine for faster ray-tracing while gaming and supports hardware-accelerated OMM ray-tracing for faster workloads.

The Frame Rate Converter 4.0 is the company's AI-powered frame interpolation technology that offers higher frame rates. The Mali-G2 Ultra NX GPU supports up to native 185+ fps gaming.

The GPU can drive WQHD+ resolution screens at up to a 180Hz variable refresh rate and supports tri-port MIPI for phones with a tri-folding display.

The built-in NPU 1090 features a Dual NPU Architecture and can handle local AI MoE (Mixture-of-Experts) models completely on-device. It also has a secondary, low-power always-on co-processor (Super Efficient NPU 2.0) that reduces power consumption for routine background tasks. It is said to be 55% better in token generation per watt and 51% faster at LLM prefill (reading prompts).

On the imaging side, the AI Imaging Fusion Architecture (ISP-NPU) supports up to 200MP resolution camera sensors, including LOFIC and UFCC (ultra-full-color capture) cameras. It also supports recording 4K 240fps slow-motion videos, 4K 60fps HDR videos, and up to 8K 60fps videos.

It uses the onboard NPU for better image and video processing and features the new VVC (H.266) hardware video decoder, which makes file sizes smaller.

In terms of connectivity, the Dimensity 9600 Pro has an integrated 5G modem, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.2, NFC, and a USB 3.2 Type-C port. The modem supports Triple-SIM Triple-Active (TSTA) technology, which means you can use three SIM cards simultaneously.

It also supports BeiDou, Galileo, GLONASS, GPS, NavIC, and QZSS satellite constellations for navigation.

The MediaTek Dimensity 9600M uses older-generation CPU cores and is likely made using TSMC's 3nm process. It has an octa-core CPU with one Arm C1-Ultra core clocked at 4.21GHz, three C1-Premium cores running at 3.5GHz, and four C1-Pro cores at 2.7GHz.

The chip uses the same Mali-G1 Ultra MC12 (12-core) GPU that is used in last year's Dimensity 9500 chip. It is compatible with LPDDR5X RAM and UFS 4.1 storage.

The GPU can drive WQHD+ resolution displays at up to a 180Hz refresh rate. It also supports tri-folding phones.

The MediaTek NPU 990 has a Dual NPU Agentic Architecture and supports Agentic AI and Generative AI.

The Imagiq ISP supports up to 320MP cameras, 4K 120fps video recording with electronic stabilization, 8K 60fps video recording, and 4K 60fps video recording with HDR, background blur, and stabilization.

Other features include a Dual-SIM Dual-Active 5G modem, GPS, BeiDou, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, NavIC, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, NFC, and a USB 3.2 Type-C connection.

You can think of the Dimensity as a slightly improved version of the Dimensity 9500 that was launched in 2025 and used in the Galaxy Tab S12+ and the Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra.