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

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Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and did some benchmarking. Each instance was 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 (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 31 May 2026 11:00:52 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 $14.00 $64.00
RAM (GB) 2 8
CPU Cores 1 4
Storage (TB) 50 240
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 6

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 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 3,992.50 3,990.61
Events per Second 765.55 2,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.6 0.46
Average Latency (ms) 1.3 0.48
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.73 0.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 0.49

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 2,419,079.35 4,031,036.30
Mebibytes per second 2,362.38 3,936.56
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.57 0.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 4,589,052.29 4,327,248.72
Mebibytes per second 4,481.50 4,225.83
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.42 0.18
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,810.43 1,848.36
Writes per Second 1,206.96 1,232.24
Fsyncs per Second 3,873.45 3,943.27
Read Mebibytes per Second 28.29 28.88
Written Mebibytes per Second 18.86 19.25
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.14 0.14
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.03 32.73
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.53 0.83

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,793.49 496.91
Average Latency (ms) 1,809.27 678.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,821.41 755.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,836.24 759.88

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,304.00 5,172.00
Queries per second 63,040.00 51,720.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.4 1.28
Average Latency (ms) 1.58 1.93
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.12 8.32
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.89 2.61

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,856.00 2,301.00
Queries per second 38,560.00 23,010.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.5 1.35
Average Latency (ms) 2.59 4.34
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.82 12.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.89 7.3

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,905.00 1,495.00
Queries per second 19,050.00 14,950.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.43 2.89
Average Latency (ms) 5.25 6.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.57 19.01
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.17 10.46

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,167.00 3,010.00
Queries per second 61,670.00 30,100.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.84 1.11
Average Latency (ms) 1.62 3.32
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.98 14.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.57 6.09

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,171,967.00 1,201,092.00
Queries per second 11,719,670.00 12,010,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 467.34 566.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 138,173.00 157,927.00
Queries per second 1,381,730.00 1,579,270.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.23 2.99
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.1 0.09

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,788.00 5,434.00
Queries per second 67,880.00 54,340.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.4 0.45
Average Latency (ms) 1.47 1.84
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.49 14.81
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.96 2.71

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,804.00 6,582.00
Queries per second 68,040.00 65,820.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.38 0.57
Average Latency (ms) 1.47 1.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.19 5.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.93 2.66

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,044.00 3,033.00
Queries per second 50,440.00 30,330.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.89 1
Average Latency (ms) 1.98 3.29
Maximum Latency (ms) 27.43 67.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.43 5.99

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,825.00 3,268.00
Queries per second 58,250.00 32,680.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.87 1.03
Average Latency (ms) 1.72 3.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.75 11.49
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 5.57

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 48,264.00 24,924.00
Queries per second 482,640.00 249,240.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.06 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.21 0.4
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.26 26.64
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.37 2.81

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 37,850.11 93,545.37
PING_MBULK per Second 38,971.16 87,796.30
SET per Second 37,271.71 93,457.94
GET per Second 37,807.18 94,250.71
INCR per Second 38,729.67 85,106.38
LPUSH per Second 35,373.19 95,057.03
RPUSH per Second 38,669.76 86,505.19
LPOP per Second 38,834.95 89,285.71
RPOP per Second 39,651.07 100,100.10
SADD per Second 36,523.01 90,661.83
HSET per Second 37,064.49 90,415.91
SPOP per Second 39,619.65 96,432.02
ZADD per Second 39,123.63 97,751.71
ZPOPMIN per Second 38,153.38 97,751.71
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 26,253.61 58,997.05
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 14,598.54 26,191.72
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 10,203.04 15,961.69
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 8,869.97 14,390.56
MSET (10 keys) per Second 35,625.22 73,152.89

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.900.28
PING_MBULK0.870.31
SET0.920.31
GET0.900.28
INCR0.880.31
LPUSH0.960.29
RPUSH0.890.32
LPOP0.890.32
RPOP0.870.27
SADD0.930.32
HSET0.920.29
SPOP0.860.30
ZADD0.880.31
ZPOPMIN0.890.28
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.340.46
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.481.05
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.512.04
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.032.12
MSET (10 keys)0.990.49

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) instance shows superior performance in most benchmarks compared to the Premium AMD (2 GB) instance, particularly in CPU-bound tasks and I/O operations, with higher RPS rates and lower latency across Redis benchmarks, CPU events per second, file I/O operations, and memory operations. The Intel variant's multi-core advantage and better thread fairness make it ideal for CPU-intensive workloads and applications requiring high concurrency and low-latency responses, while the AMD instance, despite its strong single-core performance, is better suited for less demanding tasks where cost and simplicity are prioritized over raw performance.

From the friendly human:

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