VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB)

vs.

New day, new benchmarks. Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and ran some benchmarks. Each instance was running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:09:47 GMT Thu, 01 Oct 2026 05:08:17 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 7.0.0-31-generic 7.0.0-31-generic
MySQL Version 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1 8.4.11-0ubuntu0.26.04.1
Redis Version 8.0.5 8.0.5
Location New York, NY New York, NY
Monthly Price $7.00 $16.00
RAM (GB) 1 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 25 70
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)Tie
Value (CPU events per $/mo)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) takes 4 of 6 categories.

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD DO-Premium-Intel
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 1,995.31
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 4,096.00
BogoMips 3,992.49 3,990.62
Events per Second 1,098.91 1,383.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.72 0.5
Average Latency (ms) 0.91 0.72
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.09 26.1
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.12 2.35

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,162,799.09 4,333,625.92
Mebibytes per second 4,065.23 4,232.06
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.5 2.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,248,501.02 4,219,640.73
Mebibytes per second 4,148.93 4,120.74
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.58 1.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 1,259.91 2,349.38
Writes per Second 839.91 1,566.26
Fsyncs per Second 2,696.32 5,019.91
Read Mebibytes per Second 19.69 36.71
Written Mebibytes per Second 13.12 24.47
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.21 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 48.77 3.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.67 0.41

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,291.63 2,294.95
Average Latency (ms) 2,304.59 2,302.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,317.78 2,308.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,320.55 2,320.55

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,879.00 8,290.00
Queries per second 48,790.00 82,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 1.02
Average Latency (ms) 2.05 1.2
Maximum Latency (ms) 42.95 3.93
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.76 1.82

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,925.00 4,835.00
Queries per second 29,250.00 48,350.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.54 1.03
Average Latency (ms) 3.41 2.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.27 28.71
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.18 2.86

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,482.00 2,440.00
Queries per second 14,820.00 24,400.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.5 2.47
Average Latency (ms) 6.74 4.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.47 34.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 10.27 5.77

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,894.00 8,740.00
Queries per second 48,940.00 87,400.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.88 0.61
Average Latency (ms) 2.04 1.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.26 31.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.62 1.86

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,026,342.00 1,201,092.00
Queries per second 10,263,420.00 12,010,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 488.41 416.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 126,782.00 233,729.00
Queries per second 1,267,820.00 2,337,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.76 1.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.06

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,979.00 5,487.00
Queries per second 39,790.00 54,870.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.87 0.53
Average Latency (ms) 2.51 1.82
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.34 7.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.62 2.76

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,301.00 6,975.00
Queries per second 53,010.00 69,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.49
Average Latency (ms) 1.88 1.43
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.82 4.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 2.11

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,963.00 8,563.00
Queries per second 39,630.00 85,630.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.02 0.61
Average Latency (ms) 2.52 1.17
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.61 31.11
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.57 1.86

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,192.00 7,986.00
Queries per second 41,920.00 79,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 2.38 1.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.27 33.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.18 1.96

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 37,116.00 90,875.00
Queries per second 371,160.00 908,750.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.27 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 22.61 22.2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.7 0.19

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 54,259.36 65,876.16
PING_MBULK per Second 53,106.74 63,856.96
SET per Second 54,495.91 62,972.29
GET per Second 56,980.06 57,339.45
INCR per Second 52,938.06 61,538.46
LPUSH per Second 49,825.61 66,889.63
RPUSH per Second 51,124.75 64,892.93
LPOP per Second 51,072.52 65,359.48
RPOP per Second 50,327.12 63,572.79
SADD per Second 52,083.34 63,613.23
HSET per Second 45,537.34 66,489.37
SPOP per Second 52,826.20 54,112.55
ZADD per Second 48,402.71 65,487.89
ZPOPMIN per Second 52,083.34 64,557.78
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 28,710.88 38,895.37
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 12,250.40 18,539.12
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 7,739.94 12,931.59
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 6,953.14 11,428.57
MSET (10 keys) per Second 41,101.52 58,105.75

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.590.48
PING_MBULK0.590.49
SET0.590.51
GET0.560.55
INCR0.610.51
LPUSH0.650.48
RPUSH0.630.49
LPOP0.650.49
RPOP0.650.50
SADD0.620.50
HSET0.710.48
SPOP0.600.59
ZADD0.670.49
ZPOPMIN0.610.49
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.210.85
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.681.72
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.952.59
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.402.86
MSET (10 keys)0.970.69

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) instance outperforms the Premium AMD (1 GB) in most benchmarks, particularly in Redis operations where the Intel variant achieves significantly higher requests per second (rps) across various commands like GET and LPUSH, with an overall rps of 65,876 for PING_INLINE compared to 54,259 for the AMD. This suggests the Intel instance is better suited for CPU-heavy workloads and applications requiring high throughput, while the AMD might be more appropriate for budget-conscious users needing less computational power.

From the friendly human:

If you found this VPS Showdown helpful in your search for a hosting provider, please consider supporting my efforts by signing up using my referral link for DigitalOcean.

You can also support me next time you shop on Amazon.

Providers & pricing

DigitalOcean overviewDigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) pricing DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) pricing

Related comparisons

vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB)