DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB)

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Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and did some benchmarking. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:34:21 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:37:21 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-27-generic 7.0.0-27-generic
MySQL Version 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 8.4.10-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Redis Version 8.0.5 8.0.5
Location New York, NY New York, NY
Monthly Price $8.00 $7.00
RAM (GB) 1 1
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 35 25
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 1

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Value (CPU events per $/mo)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) takes 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel DO-Premium-AMD
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,995.31 1,996.25
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 3,990.62 3,992.49
Events per Second 1,569.73 1,270.29
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.5 0.66
Average Latency (ms) 0.63 0.79
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.89 16.91
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.01 0.87

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,257,050.99 4,259,692.62
Mebibytes per second 3,180.71 4,159.86
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.04 2.04
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Operations per second 3,792,553.48 4,578,740.48
Mebibytes per second 3,703.67 4,471.43
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.49 1.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Reads per Second 2,083.32 1,043.48
Writes per Second 1,388.85 695.66
Fsyncs per Second 4,445.91 2,238.59
Read Mebibytes per Second 32.55 16.30
Written Mebibytes per Second 21.70 10.87
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.6 26.9
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.43 0.92

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 3,034.96 1,955.91
Average Latency (ms) 3,055.67 1,970.75
Maximum Latency (ms) 3,070.73 1,977.87
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3,095.38 1,973.38

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,028.00 6,004.00
Queries per second 70,280.00 60,040.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.03 1.22
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.04 352.46
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2 1.96

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,496.00 2,993.00
Queries per second 44,960.00 29,930.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.09 1.31
Average Latency (ms) 2.22 3.34
Maximum Latency (ms) 31.7 34.24
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.13 6.91

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 2,100.00 1,677.00
Queries per second 21,000.00 16,770.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.57 3.14
Average Latency (ms) 4.76 5.96
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.06 81.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.79 10.84

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,996.00 6,786.00
Queries per second 69,960.00 67,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 0.79
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.47
Maximum Latency (ms) 47.81 23.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.48 2.57

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 964,103.00 931,337.00
Queries per second 9,641,030.00 9,313,370.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 564.3 1149.14
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 194,738.00 137,388.00
Queries per second 1,947,380.00 1,373,880.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.75 1.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 3,978.00 4,725.00
Queries per second 39,780.00 47,250.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.71 0.78
Average Latency (ms) 2.51 2.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.86 4.8
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.18 3.02

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 6,387.00 6,047.00
Queries per second 63,870.00 60,470.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.54 0.37
Average Latency (ms) 1.56 1.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.51 52.51
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 2.3

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 4,587.00 2,905.00
Queries per second 45,870.00 29,050.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.92
Average Latency (ms) 2.18 3.44
Maximum Latency (ms) 49.21 66.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.49 10.09

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 7,624.00 3,682.00
Queries per second 76,240.00 36,820.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.86
Average Latency (ms) 1.31 2.71
Maximum Latency (ms) 27.61 40.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.18 7.7

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
Transactions per second 71,987.00 38,236.00
Queries per second 719,870.00 382,360.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.14 0.26
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.22 20.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 1.61

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 50,581.69 56,850.48
PING_MBULK per Second 52,714.81 61,162.08
SET per Second 56,211.35 57,570.52
GET per Second 56,401.58 57,636.89
INCR per Second 59,101.65 59,772.86
LPUSH per Second 41,084.63 57,142.86
RPUSH per Second 41,186.16 56,369.79
LPOP per Second 42,643.92 59,488.40
RPOP per Second 44,642.86 59,488.40
SADD per Second 44,072.28 58,962.27
HSET per Second 46,663.56 44,984.25
SPOP per Second 47,505.94 57,077.62
ZADD per Second 41,407.87 58,548.01
ZPOPMIN per Second 34,459.00 60,240.96
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 29,446.41 30,854.68
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 13,106.16 14,740.57
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 10,968.52 10,568.59
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 8,992.00 8,655.01
MSET (10 keys) per Second 46,620.05 49,043.65

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)
PING_INLINE0.630.56
PING_MBULK0.600.51
SET0.570.56
GET0.570.55
INCR0.550.53
LPUSH0.790.56
RPUSH0.780.57
LPOP0.770.54
RPOP0.730.54
SADD0.730.54
HSET0.690.79
SPOP0.670.55
ZADD0.780.55
ZPOPMIN0.910.52
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.141.11
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.482.31
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.003.10
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.513.65
MSET (10 keys)0.850.80

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance leads overall with higher Redis RPS benchmarks like PING_INLINE (50,582 vs 56,850) and SET (56,211 vs 57,571), showcasing stronger CPU performance and faster latency across various tasks. While the Premium AMD instance offers lower pricing, the Intel variant's superior performance in CPU-intensive tasks makes it preferable for CPU-heavy workloads, despite its higher cost.

From the friendly human:

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