DigitalOcean Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)

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Same showdown, different day. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and did some benchmarking. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 31 May 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 $21.00 $64.00
RAM (GB) 2 8
CPU Cores 2 4
Storage (TB) 60 240
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 3 6

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) 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 3,992.50 3,990.61
Events per Second 1,599.39 2,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 0.62 0.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.82 0.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.67 0.49

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 5,207,157.62 4,031,036.30
Mebibytes per second 5,085.11 3,936.56
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.2 0.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 5,245,096.07 4,327,248.72
Mebibytes per second 5,122.16 4,225.83
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.13 0.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,715.61 1,848.36
Writes per Second 1,143.67 1,232.24
Fsyncs per Second 3,669.98 3,943.27
Read Mebibytes per Second 26.81 28.88
Written Mebibytes per Second 17.87 19.25
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.15 0.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 16.22 32.73
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.54 0.83

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 556.73 496.91
Average Latency (ms) 825.56 678.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 865.15 755.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 861.95 759.88

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,259.00 5,172.00
Queries per second 62,590.00 51,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.31 1.28
Average Latency (ms) 1.6 1.93
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.28 8.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.96 2.61

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,970.00 2,301.00
Queries per second 39,700.00 23,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.36 1.35
Average Latency (ms) 2.52 4.34
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.04 12.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.55 7.3

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,013.00 1,495.00
Queries per second 20,130.00 14,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.03 2.89
Average Latency (ms) 4.96 6.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 24.99 19.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.91 10.46

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,675.00 3,010.00
Queries per second 56,750.00 30,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.96 1.11
Average Latency (ms) 1.76 3.32
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.44 14.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 6.09

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,463,217.00 1,201,092.00
Queries per second 14,632,170.00 12,010,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 443.24 566.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 125,762.00 157,927.00
Queries per second 1,257,620.00 1,579,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.37 2.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.09

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,556.00 5,434.00
Queries per second 75,560.00 54,340.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 1.32 1.84
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.33 14.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.79 2.71

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,802.00 6,582.00
Queries per second 68,020.00 65,820.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 1.47 1.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.15 5.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.96 2.66

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,367.00 3,033.00
Queries per second 53,670.00 30,330.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.96 1
Average Latency (ms) 1.86 3.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.89 67.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.71 5.99

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,465.00 3,268.00
Queries per second 54,650.00 32,680.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.97 1.03
Average Latency (ms) 1.83 3.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.94 11.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.76 5.57

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 59,025.00 24,924.00
Queries per second 590,250.00 249,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.17 0.4
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.29 26.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.3 2.81

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 52,631.58 93,545.37
PING_MBULK per Second 54,436.58 87,796.30
SET per Second 54,112.55 93,457.94
GET per Second 55,370.98 94,250.71
INCR per Second 54,141.85 85,106.38
LPUSH per Second 53,908.36 95,057.03
RPUSH per Second 53,792.36 86,505.19
LPOP per Second 52,938.06 89,285.71
RPOP per Second 54,141.85 100,100.10
SADD per Second 53,248.14 90,661.83
HSET per Second 53,908.36 90,415.91
SPOP per Second 52,521.01 96,432.02
ZADD per Second 53,850.30 97,751.71
ZPOPMIN per Second 54,259.36 97,751.71
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 39,093.04 58,997.05
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 24,962.56 26,191.72
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 18,402.65 15,961.69
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 15,748.03 14,390.56
MSET (10 keys) per Second 68,212.83 73,152.89

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.510.28
PING_MBULK0.480.31
SET0.480.31
GET0.470.28
INCR0.480.31
LPUSH0.480.29
RPUSH0.480.32
LPOP0.490.32
RPOP0.480.27
SADD0.490.32
HSET0.480.29
SPOP0.490.30
ZADD0.480.31
ZPOPMIN0.480.28
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.680.46
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.081.05
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.452.04
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.822.12
MSET (10 keys)0.390.49

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Both instances from DigitalOcean show strong performance, but they cater to different needs. The Premium AMD instance offers solid performance with a focus on more compact resources, achieving high rates of Redis operations per second with low latencies, and demonstrating reliable file I/O and memory handling. Ideal for scenarios where you need a cost-effective solution with moderate CPU power and sufficient RAM. On the other hand, the Premium Intel instance excels with its four cores and 8GB of RAM, delivering superior throughput in all benchmarks, making it ideal for CPU-intensive, I/O-heavy workloads, or applications that require higher concurrency and scalability. The choice between these two should depend on the specific performance requirements and budget constraints of your project.

From the friendly human:

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