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In the game “Genshin Impact” with ultra-high graphics and 60 frames, while other flagship phones consume up to 5.7W with an average frame rate of only 53.9FPS, the iQOO Neo9 Pro achieves 5.1W consumption with an average frame rate of 59.5FPS!
In the game “Honor of Kings” at 120 frames with extreme graphics, other flagship phones claiming to use a multi-layer VC reached 43.9℃, while the iQOO Neo9 Pro only reached 42.4℃.
In multitasking scenarios, the iQOO Neo9 Pro, equipped with the “Unfair Scheduling 2.0” feature, shows even more advantages. While playing “Genshin Impact” and using WeChat voice, other phones drop to 50.8FPS, but the iQOO Neo9 Pro maintains 59.4FPS, keeping the frame rate stable.
Recently, at the iQOO Neo9 series dual-core gaming performance technical communication conference, iQOO showcased its years of technical accumulation and strength in the gaming field. As a brand focused on gaming performance, iQOO has set a benchmark in the gaming sector since its inception.
Undoubtedly, the new iQOO Neo9 series continues the excellent tradition of high performance in iQOO phones, maintaining its image as a performance benchmark, and achieving results far exceeding other phones in the same class during tests. How did iQOO achieve this?
vivo Partners with MTK to Define the All-Big-Core Dimensity 9300
Every innovation in the industry presents opportunities for participants. With the arrival of the 3G and 4G eras, Qualcomm seized the opportunity and became a giant in the mobile communications field. The 5G era is MTK’s opportunity, and the luckiest part is that MTK has always had the “true love” of vivo supporting it.
Since the Dimensity 9000 series, vivo has established a deep cooperative relationship with MTK. Vivo’s Vice President Huang Tao stated that the Dimensity 9300 is defined by the collaboration between vivo and MTK, as both parties explore the all-big-core architecture of the Dimensity 9300 together.
Simply installing a certain SoC in a phone is not enough; the phone manufacturer must optimize based on the chip’s architecture, or else the SoC’s performance cannot be fully realized. Many phones equipped with the same SoC show significant differences in benchmark scores, let alone actual usage performance.
Years of cooperation with MTK and the insistence on using MTK chips in flagship devices have allowed vivo to accumulate extensive experience in optimizing Dimensity SoCs. The jointly defined Dimensity 9300 adopts a unique all-big-core architecture, providing performance assurance for the iQOO Neo9 series.
Generally, mobile SoCs use a big.LITTLE architecture to maintain low power consumption during daily use. After years of development, chip architectures have become complex, now including super big cores, big cores, medium cores, and small cores. However, the Dimensity 9300 is different; it abandons the traditional medium and small core architecture, adopting a configuration of 4 Cortex-X4 super big cores and 4 Cortex-A720 big cores in an all-big-core architecture.
The design of an SoC cannot be separated from the product. Since collaboration with phone manufacturers is necessary, “true love” vivo is naturally the best choice for MTK. The facts also prove that MTK’s choice was correct.
Compared to the previous generation Dimensity 9200, the Dimensity 9300 has a 40% increase in multi-core peak performance and a 33% reduction in power consumption for the same performance. According to AnTuTu benchmark scores, except for a few professional gaming phones or flagship devices focused on gaming performance, other ordinary Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 flagships score about 5% lower than vivo’s Dimensity 9300 flagship.
The iQOO Neo9 series exhibits gaming performance far exceeding that of comparable products. In the open world of “Genshin Impact”, after half an hour of gameplay, the iQOO Neo9 Pro, equipped with frame rate perception technology 2.0, achieves an average frame rate of 59.5 frames with an average power consumption of 5.1W, while competitor phones only reach 53.9 frames with a power consumption of 5.7W. iQOO not only has a higher frame rate but also lower power consumption.
Years of close cooperation have allowed vivo to optimize Dimensity chips with ease. Coupled with the iQOO Neo9 series’ 6000 square millimeter large-area VC heat spreader, which has a higher coverage rate than competitors’ multi-layer VCs, it can perfectly unleash the performance of the Dimensity 9300.
Do you think vivo is satisfied with this? No, the iQOO Neo has another major contributor to its performance exceeding that of comparable products, which is vivo’s self-developed gaming chip Q1, empowering the gaming experience with super-resolution and super-frame capabilities.
Dual Chips Forge a Gaming Titan, Q1 Sets the Benchmark for Gaming
With the research and promotion by mobile phone manufacturers, consumers are no longer unfamiliar with independent display chips. The difference is that other manufacturers mainly focus their chip development on imaging, NPU, etc., while vivo has expanded it into the gaming field, creating a gaming chip similar to a PC’s dedicated graphics card.
The history of the iQOO Neo series using independent gaming chips can be traced back to the iQOO Neo5 released in early 2021. Three years later, the iQOO Neo series has updated five generations of products, evolving from third-party independent display chips to the self-developed gaming chip Q1, combined with stronger self-developed algorithms to bring leading industry super-resolution and super-frame effects.
For gaming super-resolution, PC users may be more familiar with NVIDIA’s DLSS and AMD’s FSR, which belong to this category of technology. The performance of mobile SoCs is limited, and enhancing graphics means sacrificing frame rates. However, a good product designed for gamers naturally wants to achieve both. The iQOO gaming chip Q1 was developed to balance graphics and frame rates.
To achieve this, iQOO continuously adjusts various parameters, consults with gamers and users, and ultimately develops an efficient V-SR algorithm that achieves what players consider the best image quality.
During the training phase of V-SR, the network model enlarges low-resolution images from the gaming phone, slices them, and classifies the image blocks based on texture type, image gradient, image correlation, and other characteristics. The same slicing is done for high-resolution images, and the network structure includes multi-scale convolution and attention mechanisms. After at least 100,000 iterations of network updates, a set of target convolution kernels is obtained. These convolution kernels can sample low-resolution images into high-resolution images. During phone operation, the content rendered by the game first undergoes an upsampling process that renders the game content point-to-point, then undergoes slicing and classification, with different categories enhanced by corresponding sub-algorithms of the V-SR algorithm, and finally aggregated to output the final image.
Based on this algorithm, the iQOO Neo9 Pro achieves 1.5K super-resolution and 72 frames of super-frame concurrency. Compared to competitor phones that struggle to maintain frame rates with 2K ordinary super-resolution and 45 frames, the iQOO Neo9 Pro excels with stable performance at 1.5K resolution and 72FPS for 30 minutes, providing clearer and smoother visuals with even lower power consumption.
The significance of high frame rates has been discussed in many articles since high refresh rate screens became common. However, for gamers, the most frightening thing is not just having a frame rate of 45FPS, but the inability to maintain a stable 45FPS. As long as it does not drop below 30FPS, the eyes can adapt to a certain frame rate, and “blinking frame compensation” is not impossible.
Fluctuating frame rates can make players noticeably aware of stuttering. With the support of zero-latency frame insertion technology, the iQOO Neo9 Pro not only achieves a frame rate of 72FPS but also maintains stability, providing a higher level of gaming smoothness.
In addition to the frame insertion of the self-developed gaming chip Q1, the iQOO Neo9 series also supports frame rate perception technology, achieving precise scheduling and allocation through frame-by-frame recognition and load calculation of game scenes, reducing power consumption and improving frame stability.
Due to the limited performance of mobile SoCs, 2K resolution can be too demanding, which is why many phones adopt super-resolution solutions. However, even with super-resolution technology, the differences in the capabilities of mobile manufacturers can lead to significant differences in image detail. While competitors’ super-resolution solutions may upscale to 1200P/1440P, they essentially just enlarge pixels without significantly improving image detail. The iQOO Neo9 Pro, with its independent gaming chip and dedicated self-developed V-SR algorithm, provides a comprehensive enhancement in image quality and detail, resulting in a phenomenon where the clarity of a 1.5K screen surpasses that of a 2K screen.
The iQOO Neo9 series features a 1.5K 144Hz 8T all-weather super-sensitive screen that also supports V-Sync technology, seamlessly connecting the entire link from “rendering” to “display”, reducing latency to 37.92ms, leading the industry by 37%, and providing better responsiveness than other comparable products. In open-world mobile game scenarios, achieving super-frame rates of 144 frames is lower in latency than the native 60 frames. Additionally, based on the self-developed gaming chip Q1, the iQOO Neo9 series supports over 135 games with frame insertion capabilities, with more than 100 games supporting frame insertion to achieve 144 frames, truly leading in experience, coverage, and smoothness revolution.
“Soft and Hard Combined” is the Guarantee of iQOO’s Performance
Since the Snapdragon 835 era, there have been continuous claims from netizens that mobile performance is excessive, and Snapdragon 7 series chips can meet the needs of ordinary users. However, game developers tell us that performance excess will never arrive; there will always be richer content and more diverse gameplay, leading to higher performance requirements for new games.
The iQOO Neo9 series combines “soft and hard” through the “flagship dual-core” combination of Dimensity 9300 and self-developed gaming chip Q1, creating performance “nuclear energy” that meets the needs of current gamers with technologies like V-SR, V-Sync, frame rate perception, and zero-latency frame insertion.
At the same time, vivo has also pointed the way for the industry. As the performance requirements for mobile gaming continue to rise and mobile ray tracing rapidly becomes popular, relying solely on the CPU and GPU performance of the SoC may not meet the demands of gamers in the future.
In the 1980s, independent graphics cards emerged in the PC field. Now, 40 years later, while mobile phones may not be equipped with independent GPUs, it is time to popularize solutions that use professional gaming chips and algorithms to reduce the pressure and power consumption of SoCs while enhancing gaming frame rates, resolutions, and stability.