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

vs.

Welcome to another round of the VPS Showdown. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and ran some benchmarks. All instances were running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in the New York area (or close to it). Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 30 May 2026 19:00:52 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 $24.00 $56.00
RAM (GB) 2 8
CPU Cores 2 4
Storage (TB) 90 160
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 3 5

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) 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 963.13 1,535.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.59
Average Latency (ms) 1.04 0.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.44 0.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.25 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 3,902,195.50 4,867,578.39
Mebibytes per second 3,810.74 4,753.49
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.26 0.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 4,569,743.82 4,347,879.44
Mebibytes per second 4,462.64 4,245.98
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.15 0.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 2,742.35 2,384.51
Writes per Second 1,828.23 1,589.67
Fsyncs per Second 5,857.37 5,095.64
Read Mebibytes per Second 42.85 37.26
Written Mebibytes per Second 28.57 24.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.1 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.7 9.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.27 0.58

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 916.48 325.10
Average Latency (ms) 1,020.85 435.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,118.20 487.90
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,109.09 484.44

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,193.00 5,392.00
Queries per second 61,930.00 53,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.19 1.37
Average Latency (ms) 1.61 1.85
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.58 3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.22 2.35

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,552.00 3,296.00
Queries per second 55,520.00 32,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.9 1.47
Average Latency (ms) 1.8 3.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.37 19.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.52 4.41

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,616.00 1,930.00
Queries per second 26,160.00 19,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.57 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 3.82 5.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.45 26.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5 6.55

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,253.00 4,756.00
Queries per second 82,530.00 47,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.54 1.08
Average Latency (ms) 1.21 2.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 15.31 40.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.76 3.25

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,346,717.00 1,434,092.00
Queries per second 13,467,170.00 14,340,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 383.36 418.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 167,795.00 125,686.00
Queries per second 1,677,950.00 1,256,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.06 0.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,976.00 7,055.00
Queries per second 59,760.00 70,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.56 0.33
Average Latency (ms) 1.67 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.01 7.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.52 2.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,014.00 6,592.00
Queries per second 60,140.00 65,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.67 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 1.66 1.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.75 3.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.76 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,636.00 5,138.00
Queries per second 86,360.00 51,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.53 1.07
Average Latency (ms) 1.16 1.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.85 39.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.7 2.81

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,678.00 4,781.00
Queries per second 86,780.00 47,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.51 1.13
Average Latency (ms) 1.15 2.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.84 19.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.67 3.07

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 67,961.00 41,513.00
Queries per second 679,610.00 415,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.15 0.24
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.86 11.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 1.67

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 80,450.52 62,073.25
PING_MBULK per Second 89,047.20 58,719.91
SET per Second 84,602.37 54,171.18
GET per Second 86,281.27 64,308.68
INCR per Second 77,220.08 55,648.30
LPUSH per Second 71,942.45 55,493.89
RPUSH per Second 82,304.52 52,938.06
LPOP per Second 83,892.62 62,539.09
RPOP per Second 85,836.91 66,269.05
SADD per Second 87,108.02 62,189.05
HSET per Second 84,388.19 55,157.20
SPOP per Second 79,239.30 54,674.69
ZADD per Second 82,440.23 55,035.77
ZPOPMIN per Second 81,499.59 55,035.77
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 44,702.73 37,355.25
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 22,276.68 21,715.53
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 14,349.26 16,084.93
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 12,738.85 14,990.26
MSET (10 keys) per Second 73,746.31 57,770.08

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.410.42
PING_MBULK0.320.44
SET0.400.48
GET0.370.40
INCR0.380.47
LPUSH0.370.47
RPUSH0.340.49
LPOP0.320.42
RPOP0.400.39
SADD0.320.42
HSET0.340.47
SPOP0.390.47
ZADD0.390.48
ZPOPMIN0.330.47
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.680.78
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.371.26
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.061.71
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.401.91
MSET (10 keys)0.370.47

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance with 2 GB RAM and 2 CPU cores outperforms the Premium AMD instance with 8 GB RAM and 4 CPU cores in many benchmarks, showing higher request per second (rps) rates and lower latencies across most Redis operations, indicating superior single-core performance. The Intel instance also excels in MySQL OLTP operations and thread fairness, demonstrating better handling of CPU-intensive workloads. On the other hand, the AMD instance has better performance in CPU event rates, memory operations, and file I/O operations, signifying its advantage in handling multi-threaded and I/O-intensive tasks. For developers requiring high single-core CPU performance and low latency for tasks like Redis or MySQL, the Premium Intel instance is superior. Conversely, for workloads that benefit from more RAM, multiple CPU cores, or extensive I/O operations, the Premium AMD instance is more suitable.

From the friendly human:

If you found this VPS Showdown helpful in your search for a hosting provider, please consider supporting my efforts by signing up using my referral link for DigitalOcean.

You can also support me directly by buying me a coffee.