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

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've got brand new instances from DigitalOcean and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. All instances were running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:06:47 GMT Sat, 01 Aug 2026 05:11:17 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 $14.00
RAM (GB) 1 2
CPU Cores 1 1
Storage (TB) 35 50
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 2

Head-to-head

Category winners from the latest benchmarks.

CategoryWinner
CPU (events/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Memory (read MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
Disk I/O (MiB/s)DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB)
MySQL (read/write tps)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Redis (GET/sec)DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 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 (2 GB)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel DO-Premium-AMD
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,100.00 1,996.25
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,199.99 3,992.50
Events per Second 2,013.81 726.05
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 0.5 1.37
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.98 12.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.53 2.57

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,187,334.90 3,124,321.03
Mebibytes per second 4,089.19 3,051.09
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.12 3.2
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,366,312.99 5,198,576.87
Mebibytes per second 4,263.98 5,076.74
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.45 2.33
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,182.02 1,786.48
Writes per Second 1,454.68 1,190.99
Fsyncs per Second 4,663.66 3,820.35
Read Mebibytes per Second 34.09 27.91
Written Mebibytes per Second 22.73 18.61
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.91 15.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.42 0.54

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,139.85 1,705.40
Average Latency (ms) 2,170.02 1,717.24
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,181.39 1,725.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,198.52 1,739.68

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 8,593.00 7,218.00
Queries per second 85,930.00 72,180.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.98 1.2
Average Latency (ms) 1.16 1.38
Maximum Latency (ms) 20.7 2.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.61 1.67

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,104.00 4,665.00
Queries per second 41,040.00 46,650.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.05 1.12
Average Latency (ms) 2.43 2.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.59 24.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.3 3.43

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,212.00 2,351.00
Queries per second 22,120.00 23,510.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.65 2.54
Average Latency (ms) 4.51 4.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.28 29.54
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.32 6.21

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,241.00 7,702.00
Queries per second 62,410.00 77,020.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.63 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 1.6 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.45 39.5
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 2.22

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,171,967.00 1,317,592.00
Queries per second 11,719,670.00 13,175,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 459.35 403.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 234,610.00 161,910.00
Queries per second 2,346,100.00 1,619,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.04 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.37 1.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.06 0.09

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,162.00 5,673.00
Queries per second 51,620.00 56,730.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.55
Average Latency (ms) 1.93 1.76
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.87 5.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 2.48

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,424.00 7,133.00
Queries per second 74,240.00 71,330.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.49 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 1.35 1.4
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.12 5.08
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.89 1.89

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,010.00 7,358.00
Queries per second 70,100.00 73,580.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.62 0.76
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 37.55 32.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.3 2.22

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,487.00 7,941.00
Queries per second 64,870.00 79,410.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 1.54 1.26
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.73 24.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 2

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 67,164.00 67,880.00
Queries per second 671,640.00 678,800.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.15 0.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.58 18.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.03 0.94

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 68,728.52 68,306.01
PING_MBULK per Second 69,060.77 67,294.75
SET per Second 64,350.06 66,979.23
GET per Second 58,788.95 68,352.70
INCR per Second 66,137.57 66,225.16
LPUSH per Second 65,487.89 67,024.13
RPUSH per Second 68,259.38 68,728.52
LPOP per Second 66,755.67 67,340.07
RPOP per Second 66,800.27 67,521.95
SADD per Second 66,313.00 69,589.42
HSET per Second 66,533.60 67,430.88
SPOP per Second 69,979.01 69,252.08
ZADD per Second 60,938.45 69,252.08
ZPOPMIN per Second 63,411.54 68,212.83
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 38,372.98 36,023.05
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 18,378.97 18,308.31
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,220.46 12,436.26
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 11,273.96 10,716.96
MSET (10 keys) per Second 50,000.00 55,679.29

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.460.46
PING_MBULK0.460.46
SET0.500.48
GET0.540.46
INCR0.480.48
LPUSH0.490.47
RPUSH0.470.46
LPOP0.480.48
RPOP0.480.47
SADD0.480.45
HSET0.480.47
SPOP0.450.45
ZADD0.530.46
ZPOPMIN0.500.46
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.870.96
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.751.83
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.712.78
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.893.09
MSET (10 keys)0.800.73

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The Premium AMD (2 GB) instance outperforms the Premium Intel (1 GB) in most benchmarks, especially in Redis SET operations with 66,979.23 requests per second (rps) compared to 64,350.06 rps, and MySQL bulk inserts with 131,165.7 transactions per second (tps) against 115,974.14 tps. These superior results indicate that the Premium AMD instance is more suitable for CPU-intensive and memory-demanding applications, whereas the Intel instance may be more budget-friendly for lighter workloads.

From the friendly human:

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Providers & pricing

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