Apple has launched the iPhone 18 Pro and the biggest upgrade this year is the A20 Pro, which is the first iPhone chip built on TSMC's 2nm process. On the Android side, its natural rival is MediaTek's Dimensity 9500 chipset. In our Dimensity 9500 benchmark testing, it proved that it's a flagship silicon, especially the GPU. So in this guide, we have compared the A20 Pro and Dimensity 9500 across the CPU and GPU and see what their past performance tells us. On that note, let's begin.
A20 Pro vs Dimensity 9500: The 2nm Advantage
Starting with the manufacturing process, the A20 Pro is built on TSMC's 2nm (N2) node. It's the first time TSMC is moving away from FinFET transistors and adopting gate-all-around (GAA) nanosheet transistors. On the other hand, the Dimensity 9500 is a generation behind on the N3P (3nm) node.
A denser and more efficient node gives Apple the room to either push clock speeds higher or improve battery life without increasing the size of the chip.
That said, this advantage is not going to last forever since MediaTek is also moving to 2nm with its upcoming Dimensity 9600 Pro and Pro Max chips. In fact, Qualcomm is also adopting TSMC's 2nm N2P node with its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 Pro chipset (could be called Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6).
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A20 Pro vs Dimensity 9500: CPU
When it comes to CPU design, Apple has always picked a balanced setup. The A20 Pro brings 6-core cluster, featuring two new super cores for the first time and four efficiency cores. The efficiency cores rely on the larger 8MB L2 cache for better performance.
MediaTek, on the other hand, has adopted the Armv9.3 design and packs 8 Arm C1-series cores. The Dimensity 9500 brings one C1-Ultra core at 4.21GHz, 3x C1-Premium cores at 3.5GHz and 4x C1-Pro cores at 2.7GHz along with up to 16MB of L3 cache.
Past performance results give us a good idea of how both processors compare. Going by the Apple A19 Pro benchmark results, the chip scored 3,895 in Geekbench 6 single-core and 9,746 in multi-core, which kept Apple at the top of the single-threaded charts. And in our own testing on the Vivo X300 Pro, the Dimensity 9500 scored 3,315 in single-core and 9,914 in multi-core.
So in practical terms, the A19 Pro was around 17% faster in single-core, while the Dimensity 9500, thanks to its 8 big cores, stayed ahead in multi-core workloads. Now, if we compare the A20 Pro with the Dimensity 9500, Apple should lead even further by a comfortable margin, especially in single-core tasks.
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A20 Pro vs Dimensity 9500: GPU
Graphics performance is where the Dimensity 9500 has stood out on top over the past year. Its 12-core Arm Mali-G1 Ultra (MC12) is a graphics powerhouse. MediaTek claims a 33% GPU improvement along with a huge 119% jump in ray-tracing performance over the Dimensity 9400. In 3DMark tests, the Dimensity 9500 posted around 25% higher scores than the 6-core GPU on the A19 Pro.
However, the issue is with sustained performance because MediaTek's chip tends to run hot and thermal stability remains its biggest weakness. In our testing, the Dimensity 9500's CPU throttled down to just 59% of its peak performance during a 15-minute stress test.
And Qualcomm's chipset didn't fare any better here, as our Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 benchmark run showed the Adreno 840 GPU collapsing to a dismal 25% stability once the chip heated up.
Apple is improving its GPU from four different angles with the A20 Pro. The GPU has grown from six cores to seven and the memory interface has moved to 96-bit LPDDR5X, which should bring more bandwidth.
And most importantly, the iPhone 18 Pro has a 3x larger vapour chamber, which should help the chipset sustain peak performance for much longer. Finally, the new wafer-level packaging reduces heat and throttling during long gaming sessions.
To put it simply, MediaTek still wins in terms of peak GPU throughput, but Apple is closing the gap with a 7-core GPU and better sustained performance.
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A20 Pro vs Dimensity 9500: Specs Comparison
| Specification | Apple A20 Pro | MediaTek Dimensity 9500 |
|---|---|---|
| Process Node | TSMC 2nm (N2) | TSMC 3nm (N3P) |
| CPU | 6-core Apple CPU | Octa-core, Arm C1-series |
| CPU Cores | 2 super + 4 efficiency | 1x C1-Ultra at 4.21GHz + 3x C1-Premium at 3.5GHz + 4x C1-Pro at 2.7GHz |
| GPU | 7-core Apple GPU | 12-core Arm Mali-G1 Ultra (MC12) |
| NPU | Dual 16-core Neural Engine, 32-core | MediaTek NPU 990 (2nd-gen Gen-AI Engine) |
| Memory | LPDDR5X, 96-bit bus | LPDDR5X up to 10,667Mbps |
| Storage | Apple NVMe | UFS 4.1 |
| Modem | Apple C2 5G modem | MediaTek 5G modem |
| Connectivity | Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, Thread, Apple N1 chipset | Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0 |
Apple's new A20 Pro is definitely better in terms of CPU and with the extra GPU core, it's finally going to compete with rival chipsets on the Android side, both in terms of peak throughput and sustained performance. Moving to TSMC's 2nm node should improve Apple's single-core CPU lead and enhance its efficiency while the wider memory bus should help all the compute units.
On the other side, the Dimensity 9500 is also a flagship chipset and this is not a one-sided contest. It still has a lead in raw GPU performance and its eight big Arm C1-series cores deliver incredible multi-core performance. Not to mention, you get the Dimensity 9500 inside phones that are considerably more affordable than Apple's flagships.
The only weakness with the Dimensity 9500 is stability because a chip this powerful throttles heavily and ends up losing performance over long sessions.
By the way, MediaTek's own 2nm chip, Dimensity 9600 Pro is launching next week on September 15. And an early Geekbench listing of Dimensity 9600 Pro show it approaching 5GHz clock speeds. So while the A20 Pro takes the lead for now, MediaTek should soon have a 2nm contender, which will make the fight interesting.
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