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

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Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean and ran some benchmarks. All instances were running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Enough talk. Here's the data.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sat, 30 May 2026 22:00:52 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 $16.00 $56.00
RAM (GB) 2 8
CPU Cores 1 4
Storage (TB) 70 160
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 2 5

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 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 495.64 1,535.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.59
Average Latency (ms) 2.01 0.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.47 0.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.19 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 3,562,900.21 4,867,578.39
Mebibytes per second 3,479.39 4,753.49
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.78 0.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 4,559,986.14 4,347,879.44
Mebibytes per second 4,453.11 4,245.98
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.03 0.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 2,991.18 2,384.51
Writes per Second 1,994.09 1,589.67
Fsyncs per Second 6,381.40 5,095.64
Read Mebibytes per Second 46.74 37.26
Written Mebibytes per Second 31.16 24.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.55 9.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.25 0.58

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 2,305.94 325.10
Average Latency (ms) 2,325.82 435.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 2,341.18 487.90
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2,320.55 484.44

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,642.00 5,392.00
Queries per second 56,420.00 53,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.09 1.37
Average Latency (ms) 1.77 1.85
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.6 3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.26 2.35

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,500.00 3,296.00
Queries per second 65,000.00 32,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.69 1.47
Average Latency (ms) 1.54 3.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 18.05 19.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 4.41

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,286.00 1,930.00
Queries per second 22,860.00 19,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.63 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 4.37 5.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 10.8 26.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.88 6.55

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,299.00 4,756.00
Queries per second 82,990.00 47,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.48 1.08
Average Latency (ms) 1.2 2.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.9 40.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.93 3.25

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 964,103.00 1,434,092.00
Queries per second 9,641,030.00 14,340,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 474.48 418.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 181,396.00 125,686.00
Queries per second 1,813,960.00 1,256,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.05 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 1.44 0.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.08 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,155.00 7,055.00
Queries per second 81,550.00 70,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.47 0.33
Average Latency (ms) 1.22 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.12 7.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.58 2.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 8,540.00 6,592.00
Queries per second 85,400.00 65,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 1.17 1.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.83 3.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.52 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,509.00 5,138.00
Queries per second 75,090.00 51,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.5 1.07
Average Latency (ms) 1.33 1.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.77 39.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.26 2.81

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 9,508.00 4,781.00
Queries per second 95,080.00 47,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 1.13
Average Latency (ms) 1.05 2.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.78 19.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.52 3.07

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 85,917.00 41,513.00
Queries per second 859,170.00 415,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.03 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.12 0.24
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.24 11.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.29 1.67

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 83,263.95 62,073.25
PING_MBULK per Second 86,880.97 58,719.91
SET per Second 82,987.55 54,171.18
GET per Second 85,616.44 64,308.68
INCR per Second 84,674.01 55,648.30
LPUSH per Second 82,781.46 55,493.89
RPUSH per Second 84,530.86 52,938.06
LPOP per Second 82,781.46 62,539.09
RPOP per Second 81,967.21 66,269.05
SADD per Second 84,317.03 62,189.05
HSET per Second 76,923.08 55,157.20
SPOP per Second 86,058.52 54,674.69
ZADD per Second 82,034.45 55,035.77
ZPOPMIN per Second 84,817.64 55,035.77
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 42,176.30 37,355.25
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 19,331.14 21,715.53
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 12,430.08 16,084.93
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 10,767.74 14,990.26
MSET (10 keys) per Second 72,886.30 57,770.08

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.390.42
PING_MBULK0.370.44
SET0.390.48
GET0.380.40
INCR0.380.47
LPUSH0.390.47
RPUSH0.390.49
LPOP0.400.42
RPOP0.400.39
SADD0.390.42
HSET0.420.47
SPOP0.380.47
ZADD0.400.48
ZPOPMIN0.380.47
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.860.78
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.911.26
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.951.71
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)3.391.91
MSET (10 keys)0.480.47

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB) instance excels in single-threaded, CPU-intensive tasks, showing impressive Redis benchmark results, including high request rates and low latencies for most operations, but struggles with larger data range operations. The DigitalOcean Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) instance significantly outperforms in multi-threaded tasks, displaying superior CPU, file I/O, and Redis benchmark results, especially for complex memory operations and large-scale data range retrievals, which suggests it is better suited for workloads that benefit from multiple cores and higher memory capacity, such as database operations, high concurrency environments, and large-scale data processing tasks.

From the friendly human:

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