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

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My friend, I'm so glad you're here! Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and did some benchmarking. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 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 (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Mon, 01 Jun 2026 05:00:52 GMT Sun, 31 May 2026 20:00:52 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 $8.00 $56.00
RAM (GB) 1 8
CPU Cores 1 4
Storage (TB) 35 160
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 1 5

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Premium-Intel DO-Premium-AMD
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.14 1,996.25
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,988.28 3,992.50
Events per Second 771.15 1,535.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.59
Average Latency (ms) 1.3 0.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.28 0.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.43 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 4,962,068.28 4,867,578.39
Mebibytes per second 4,845.77 4,753.49
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.25 0.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 4,776,781.23 4,347,879.44
Mebibytes per second 4,664.83 4,245.98
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.23 0.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 3,231.15 2,384.51
Writes per Second 2,154.10 1,589.67
Fsyncs per Second 6,894.61 5,095.64
Read Mebibytes per Second 50.49 37.26
Written Mebibytes per Second 33.66 24.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.93 9.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.21 0.58

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,765.96 325.10
Average Latency (ms) 1,773.18 435.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,781.78 487.90
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,771.29 484.44

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,098.00 5,392.00
Queries per second 80,980.00 53,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.06 1.37
Average Latency (ms) 1.23 1.85
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.59 3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.76 2.35

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,982.00 3,296.00
Queries per second 69,820.00 32,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.83 1.47
Average Latency (ms) 1.43 3.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 17.43 19.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.14 4.41

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,010.00 1,930.00
Queries per second 30,100.00 19,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.31 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 3.32 5.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.93 26.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.65 6.55

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 11,468.00 4,756.00
Queries per second 114,680.00 47,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 1.08
Average Latency (ms) 0.87 2.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.4 40.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.25 3.25

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,084,592.00 1,434,092.00
Queries per second 10,845,920.00 14,340,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 396.25 418.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 234,000.00 125,686.00
Queries per second 2,340,000.00 1,256,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.04 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.17 0.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.06 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,442.00 7,055.00
Queries per second 64,420.00 70,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.4 0.33
Average Latency (ms) 1.55 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.44 7.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.11 2.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,455.00 6,592.00
Queries per second 74,550.00 65,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 1.34 1.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.23 3.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.73 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 11,660.00 5,138.00
Queries per second 116,600.00 51,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 1.07
Average Latency (ms) 0.86 1.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.68 39.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.34 2.81

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 12,470.00 4,781.00
Queries per second 124,700.00 47,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 1.13
Average Latency (ms) 0.8 2.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.75 19.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.14 3.07

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 76,943.00 41,513.00
Queries per second 769,430.00 415,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.13 0.24
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.08 11.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.57 1.67

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 68,540.09 62,073.25
PING_MBULK per Second 75,987.84 58,719.91
SET per Second 71,377.59 54,171.18
GET per Second 72,992.70 64,308.68
INCR per Second 73,313.78 55,648.30
LPUSH per Second 69,783.67 55,493.89
RPUSH per Second 70,771.41 52,938.06
LPOP per Second 66,533.60 62,539.09
RPOP per Second 69,637.88 66,269.05
SADD per Second 65,530.80 62,189.05
HSET per Second 70,175.44 55,157.20
SPOP per Second 74,571.22 54,674.69
ZADD per Second 71,123.76 55,035.77
ZPOPMIN per Second 74,239.05 55,035.77
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 35,727.05 37,355.25
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 15,590.89 21,715.53
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 10,346.61 16,084.93
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 8,889.68 14,990.26
MSET (10 keys) per Second 62,656.64 57,770.08

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (1 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.470.42
PING_MBULK0.420.44
SET0.450.48
GET0.440.40
INCR0.440.47
LPUSH0.460.47
RPUSH0.460.49
LPOP0.500.42
RPOP0.470.39
SADD0.500.42
HSET0.460.47
SPOP0.430.47
ZADD0.450.48
ZPOPMIN0.430.47
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.010.78
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.381.26
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)3.531.71
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.091.91
MSET (10 keys)0.560.47

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

After analyzing the benchmark results for both instances, it's clear that the DigitalOcean Premium Intel (1 GB) excels in memory operations, showing high throughput and minimal latency for both read and write operations. This instance also provides excellent performance in CPU benchmarks, particularly in CPU fairness and latency metrics. Conversely, the DigitalOcean Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) stands out in multi-threaded tasks, offering higher performance in CPU events per second and better handling of multi-threaded workloads. This instance's memory operations also demonstrate high throughput but with slightly higher latencies compared to the Intel instance. Based on these benchmarks, the Premium Intel (1 GB) is ideal for applications that require high memory throughput and low latency, such as high-performance computing tasks or memory-intensive applications, while the Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) is better suited for CPU-intensive and multi-threaded workloads, making it a good choice for applications that benefit from multiple cores and higher CPU performance.

From the friendly human:

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