DigitalOcean Premium AMD (1 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and did some benchmarking. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 02 Jun 2026 03:00:52 GMT Tue, 02 Jun 2026 06:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-71-generic
MySQL Version 8.0.45-0ubuntu0.24.04.1 8.0.45-0ubuntu0.24.04.1
Redis Version 7.0.15 7.0.15
Location New York, NY New York, NY
Monthly Price $7.00 $64.00
RAM (GB) 1 8
CPU Cores 1 4
Storage (TB) 25 240
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 6

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
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 3,990.61
Events per Second 769.79 2,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 1.3 0.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.42 0.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.57 0.49

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 4,782,592.86 4,031,036.30
Mebibytes per second 4,670.50 3,936.56
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.2 0.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 5,249,396.08 4,327,248.72
Mebibytes per second 5,126.36 4,225.83
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.59 0.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,730.28 1,848.36
Writes per Second 1,153.52 1,232.24
Fsyncs per Second 3,691.26 3,943.27
Read Mebibytes per Second 27.04 28.88
Written Mebibytes per Second 18.02 19.25
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.15 0.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.49 32.73
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.5 0.83

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,618.21 496.91
Average Latency (ms) 1,629.75 678.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,641.18 755.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,648.20 759.88

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,365.00 5,172.00
Queries per second 63,650.00 51,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.43 1.28
Average Latency (ms) 1.57 1.93
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.05 8.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 2.61

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,031.00 2,301.00
Queries per second 40,310.00 23,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.5 1.35
Average Latency (ms) 2.48 4.34
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.51 12.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.62 7.3

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,979.00 1,495.00
Queries per second 19,790.00 14,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.33 2.89
Average Latency (ms) 5.05 6.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 38.41 19.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.04 10.46

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,206.00 3,010.00
Queries per second 62,060.00 30,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.82 1.11
Average Latency (ms) 1.61 3.32
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.37 14.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.57 6.09

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,259,342.00 1,201,092.00
Queries per second 12,593,420.00 12,010,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 474.62 566.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 137,982.00 157,927.00
Queries per second 1,379,820.00 1,579,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.85 2.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.09

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,054.00 5,434.00
Queries per second 70,540.00 54,340.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.54 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.84
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.03 14.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.89 2.71

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,291.00 6,582.00
Queries per second 72,910.00 65,820.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 1.37 1.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.61 5.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 2.66

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,834.00 3,033.00
Queries per second 58,340.00 30,330.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.9 1
Average Latency (ms) 1.71 3.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 27.72 67.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 5.99

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,219.00 3,268.00
Queries per second 62,190.00 32,680.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.81 1.03
Average Latency (ms) 1.61 3.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 21.32 11.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 5.57

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 43,774.00 24,924.00
Queries per second 437,740.00 249,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.23 0.4
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.4 26.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.44 2.81

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 39,401.10 93,545.37
PING_MBULK per Second 37,411.15 87,796.30
SET per Second 39,682.54 93,457.94
GET per Second 39,354.59 94,250.71
INCR per Second 39,714.06 85,106.38
LPUSH per Second 39,714.06 95,057.03
RPUSH per Second 40,371.42 86,505.19
LPOP per Second 39,401.10 89,285.71
RPOP per Second 38,299.50 100,100.10
SADD per Second 38,008.36 90,661.83
HSET per Second 39,200.31 90,415.91
SPOP per Second 38,491.14 96,432.02
ZADD per Second 39,032.00 97,751.71
ZPOPMIN per Second 39,572.62 97,751.71
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 26,609.90 58,997.05
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 14,823.60 26,191.72
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 10,390.69 15,961.69
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 9,089.26 14,390.56
MSET (10 keys) per Second 36,179.45 73,152.89

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.870.28
PING_MBULK0.900.31
SET0.870.31
GET0.870.28
INCR0.860.31
LPUSH0.870.29
RPUSH0.850.32
LPOP0.880.32
RPOP0.900.27
SADD0.900.32
HSET0.880.29
SPOP0.890.30
ZADD0.880.31
ZPOPMIN0.860.28
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.310.46
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.411.05
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.432.04
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.922.12
MSET (10 keys)0.980.49

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Upon comparing the benchmark performance of DigitalOcean's Premium AMD (1 GB) versus the Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores), it is evident that the Premium Intel instance outperforms the AMD instance significantly in terms of CPU, memory, and I/O operations. The Intel instance achieves higher request rates per second across various Redis commands, demonstrates faster file I/O and memory operations, and handles MySQL operations more efficiently. This superior performance is likely due to the more powerful CPU, higher RAM, and better overall system optimization in the Intel configuration. Consequently, the Premium Intel instance is highly recommended for CPU-intensive, memory-heavy, and I/O-intensive workloads, while the AMD instance, although competent for lighter tasks, may not match the Intel's efficiency in demanding scenarios.

From the friendly human:

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