MediaTek’s latest Dimensity 9200 SoC will begin shipping on flagship smartphones early next year to replace last year’s Dimensity 9000. The latest design features the integration of hardware-accelerated ray tracing on a mobile platform. The feature should be particularly attractive for gaming-centric smartphones like the upcoming Asus ROG Phone 6D Ultimate, which was announced alongside the Dimensity 9200 last week.
One of the first mobile games to support ray tracing will be the FPS title Arena Breakout by Tencent. MediaTek says it worked closely with the game developer to better optimize the title for the Dimensity 9200 and its RT capabilities.
Of course, enabling RT will inevitably result in a performance deficit, similar to desktop PCs. When asked how much performance hit users can expect, MediaTek says frame rates would be halved from 60 to 30 FPS when RT is enabled. Whether or not the slower frame rates are worth the increase in visual fidelity is a subjective matter. However, we can at least hope that Tencent will offer the ability to enable or disable RT at will to give players more freedom while playing the game.
Qualcomm has announced that next-gen Snapdragon will also support RT on mobile, but the feature will also most likely result in a performance hit if enabled. It will certainly be interesting to see how RT is used for mobile gaming, especially as most titles tend to be cartoony or cel-shaded rather than realistic.
After graduating from the University of California with a BS in Environmental Hydrodynamics, I studied reactor physics to obtain a license to operate nuclear reactors from the US NRC. After working with modern nuclear reactivity systems, amazingly powered by 1980’s computers, one experiences a remarkable appreciation for everyday consumer electronics. When I’m not managing day-to-day business and US reviews on Notebookcheck, I follow the eSports scene and the latest gaming news.
