VPS Showdown VPS Showdown

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

vs.

Same showdown, different day. Today I spun up fresh instances from DigitalOcean and did some benchmarking. All instances were running Ubuntu 26.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:34:21 GMT Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:38:52 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) 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 1,569.73 730.16
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.5 0.64
Average Latency (ms) 0.63 1.37
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.89 18.59
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.01 2.52

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,257,050.99 3,123,620.54
Mebibytes per second 3,180.71 3,050.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.04 3.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Operations per second 3,792,553.48 5,224,478.37
Mebibytes per second 3,703.67 5,102.03
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.49 3.4
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,083.32 2,012.74
Writes per Second 1,388.85 1,341.83
Fsyncs per Second 4,445.91 4,295.05
Read Mebibytes per Second 32.55 31.45
Written Mebibytes per Second 21.70 20.97
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.6 16.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.43 0.5

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 3,034.96 1,660.48
Average Latency (ms) 3,055.67 1,679.64
Maximum Latency (ms) 3,070.73 1,687.90
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3,095.38 1,678.14

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,028.00 7,656.00
Queries per second 70,280.00 76,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.03 1.17
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.3
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.04 2.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2 1.58

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,496.00 4,129.00
Queries per second 44,960.00 41,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.09 1.14
Average Latency (ms) 2.22 2.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 31.7 19.52
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.13 3.75

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 2,100.00 2,409.00
Queries per second 21,000.00 24,090.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.57 2.42
Average Latency (ms) 4.76 4.15
Maximum Latency (ms) 25.06 75.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.79 6.55

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,996.00 6,034.00
Queries per second 69,960.00 60,340.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 0.73
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 47.81 18.71
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.48 3.02

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 964,103.00 1,346,717.00
Queries per second 9,641,030.00 13,467,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 564.3 407.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 194,738.00 164,009.00
Queries per second 1,947,380.00 1,640,090.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.75 1.58
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.09

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,978.00 5,968.00
Queries per second 39,780.00 59,680.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.71 0.61
Average Latency (ms) 2.51 1.67
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.86 3.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.18 2.22

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,387.00 7,381.00
Queries per second 63,870.00 73,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.54 0.52
Average Latency (ms) 1.56 1.35
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.51 2.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 1.79

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,587.00 6,407.00
Queries per second 45,870.00 64,070.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 0.77
Average Latency (ms) 2.18 1.56
Maximum Latency (ms) 49.21 18.26
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.49 2.66

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,624.00 6,751.00
Queries per second 76,240.00 67,510.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.74
Average Latency (ms) 1.31 1.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 27.61 15.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.18 2.48

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
Transactions per second 71,987.00 62,091.00
Queries per second 719,870.00 620,910.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.14 0.16
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.22 26.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 1.08

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 50,581.69 71,225.07
PING_MBULK per Second 52,714.81 71,225.07
SET per Second 56,211.35 68,119.89
GET per Second 56,401.58 66,401.06
INCR per Second 59,101.65 70,077.09
LPUSH per Second 41,084.63 70,422.54
RPUSH per Second 41,186.16 68,965.52
LPOP per Second 42,643.92 68,259.38
RPOP per Second 44,642.86 66,445.18
SADD per Second 44,072.28 69,492.70
HSET per Second 46,663.56 66,445.18
SPOP per Second 47,505.94 69,930.07
ZADD per Second 41,407.87 71,428.57
ZPOPMIN per Second 34,459.00 71,174.38
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 29,446.41 38,819.88
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 13,106.16 18,768.77
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 10,968.52 12,822.16
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 8,992.00 10,741.14
MSET (10 keys) per Second 46,620.05 61,387.36

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.630.45
PING_MBULK0.600.44
SET0.570.47
GET0.570.48
INCR0.550.45
LPUSH0.790.46
RPUSH0.780.46
LPOP0.770.47
RPOP0.730.49
SADD0.730.46
HSET0.690.49
SPOP0.670.45
ZADD0.780.45
ZPOPMIN0.910.44
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.140.91
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.481.81
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.002.72
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.513.13
MSET (10 keys)0.850.65

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

In comparing the DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) and Premium AMD (2 GB) instances, the AMD instance leads overall in most benchmarks due to its higher throughput in Redis operations, such as the SET and GET commands, where it achieves 56,211 and 56,402 requests per second respectively compared to the Intel's 50,582 and 52,715. The AMD instance also excels in MySQL bulk insert operations with 134,435 transactions per second against the Intel's 92,687. However, the Intel instance shows slightly better CPU latency and file I/O performance. For use-cases prioritizing both CPU and memory capacity, the AMD instance provides the edge, especially for memory-intensive tasks.

From the friendly human:

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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)