MediaTek just gone done announcing the Dimensity 9400+, so naturally, there would be several comparisons against Qualcomm’s latest and greatest, the Snapdragon 8 Elite. The newly announced SoC found in the Vivo x200s was taken through its paces, with Genshin Impact one of the many tests performed to see how the chipset would fare. In a nutshell, it was an impressive showing, as the Dimensity 9400+ delivered results on par with the Snapdragon 8 Elite, but as we take a look at the numbers with an eagle eye, there are multiple variables involved that would make us immediately award Qualcomm’s camp the victory.
Genshin Impact delivers a much more playable experience on the Snapdragon 8 Elite, which obtains a 53 percent higher framerate than the Dimensity 9400+ in the ‘1% lows’ when running Genshin Impact
The device featuring the Snapdragon 8 Elite was the Xiaomi 15 Pro, with the Dimensity 9400+ keeping pace with the fastest Android smartphone chipset in the world by running Genshin Impact a solid 59.9FPS, along with a power consumption of 4.6W. In comparison, the competing silicon also maintains the same FPS, but our acquaintance @faridofanani96, who posted the benchmark results from Geekerwan, shows that the Snapdragon 8 Elite was consuming 4.9W. Even though some would consider the Dimensity 9400+ to be the clear victor in terms of ‘performance per watt,’ there are other variables to consider.
For instance, the ‘1% lows’ when Genshin Impact on the Snapdragon 8 Elite were significantly higher than the Dimensity 9400+, resulting in a whopping 53 percent performance delta. This data reveals that it would be a more enjoyable experience when running the game on the Xiaomi 15 Pro as opposed to the Vivo x200s, which drops to 31.5FPS in the ‘1% lows’ compared to the Snapdragon 8 Elite’s 48.2FPS. No explanation has been given as to why the Dimensity 9400+ is performing the way it is, but if you look at the Dimensity 9400, it too has poor ‘1% low’ scores of 29.9FPS.
Our guess is that both the Dimensity 9400+ and the Dimensity 9400 are thermal throttling to the point that none of the devices sporting these chipsets can deliver a playable framerate when running Genshin Impact. This could be due to the lack of an elaborate cooling solution on the Vivo x200s, and this addition can often result in a ‘day and night’ difference. Both the Snapdragon 8 Elite and Dimensity 9400+ are fabricated on TSMC’s second-generation 3nm process, but MediaTek’s latest SoC features ARM’s designs, suggesting that these could be less efficient than the in-house Oryon cores.
It is also worth noting that the Xiaomi 15 Pro is rendering Genshin Impact at a higher resolution, which would put more stress on the Snapdragon 8 Elite. Even then, it can best the Dimensity 9400+, but this is not the only test that we will compare against both chipsets, so stay tuned for more updates.
