DigitalOcean Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) 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 some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and ran my world famous suite of benchmarking scripts. Each instance was running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 02 Jun 2026 06:00:52 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 $64.00 $56.00
RAM (GB) 8 8
CPU Cores 4 4
Storage (TB) 240 160
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 6 5

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
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 3,990.61 3,992.50
Events per Second 2,100.00 1,535.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.46 0.59
Average Latency (ms) 0.48 0.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.77 0.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.49 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 4,031,036.30 4,867,578.39
Mebibytes per second 3,936.56 4,753.49
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.09 0.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 4,327,248.72 4,347,879.44
Mebibytes per second 4,225.83 4,245.98
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.18 0.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,848.36 2,384.51
Writes per Second 1,232.24 1,589.67
Fsyncs per Second 3,943.27 5,095.64
Read Mebibytes per Second 28.88 37.26
Written Mebibytes per Second 19.25 24.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.14 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 32.73 9.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.83 0.58

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 496.91 325.10
Average Latency (ms) 678.09 435.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 755.25 487.90
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 759.88 484.44

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,172.00 5,392.00
Queries per second 51,720.00 53,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.28 1.37
Average Latency (ms) 1.93 1.85
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.32 3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.61 2.35

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,301.00 3,296.00
Queries per second 23,010.00 32,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.35 1.47
Average Latency (ms) 4.34 3.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 12.64 19.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.3 4.41

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,495.00 1,930.00
Queries per second 14,950.00 19,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2.89 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 6.68 5.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.01 26.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 10.46 6.55

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,010.00 4,756.00
Queries per second 30,100.00 47,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.11 1.08
Average Latency (ms) 3.32 2.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.62 40.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.09 3.25

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,201,092.00 1,434,092.00
Queries per second 12,010,920.00 14,340,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 566.03 418.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 157,927.00 125,686.00
Queries per second 1,579,270.00 1,256,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.06 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 2.99 0.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.09 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,434.00 7,055.00
Queries per second 54,340.00 70,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.45 0.33
Average Latency (ms) 1.84 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.81 7.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.71 2.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,582.00 6,592.00
Queries per second 65,820.00 65,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.57 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 1.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 5.15 3.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.66 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,033.00 5,138.00
Queries per second 30,330.00 51,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1 1.07
Average Latency (ms) 3.29 1.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 67.75 39.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.99 2.81

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,268.00 4,781.00
Queries per second 32,680.00 47,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.03 1.13
Average Latency (ms) 3.06 2.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.49 19.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.57 3.07

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 24,924.00 41,513.00
Queries per second 249,240.00 415,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.4 0.24
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.64 11.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 1.67

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 93,545.37 62,073.25
PING_MBULK per Second 87,796.30 58,719.91
SET per Second 93,457.94 54,171.18
GET per Second 94,250.71 64,308.68
INCR per Second 85,106.38 55,648.30
LPUSH per Second 95,057.03 55,493.89
RPUSH per Second 86,505.19 52,938.06
LPOP per Second 89,285.71 62,539.09
RPOP per Second 100,100.10 66,269.05
SADD per Second 90,661.83 62,189.05
HSET per Second 90,415.91 55,157.20
SPOP per Second 96,432.02 54,674.69
ZADD per Second 97,751.71 55,035.77
ZPOPMIN per Second 97,751.71 55,035.77
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 58,997.05 37,355.25
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 26,191.72 21,715.53
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 15,961.69 16,084.93
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,390.56 14,990.26
MSET (10 keys) per Second 73,152.89 57,770.08

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.280.42
PING_MBULK0.310.44
SET0.310.48
GET0.280.40
INCR0.310.47
LPUSH0.290.47
RPUSH0.320.49
LPOP0.320.42
RPOP0.270.39
SADD0.320.42
HSET0.290.47
SPOP0.300.47
ZADD0.310.48
ZPOPMIN0.280.47
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.460.78
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.051.26
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.041.71
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)2.121.91
MSET (10 keys)0.490.47

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

The benchmark results suggest that the DigitalOcean Premium Intel instance performs significantly better across most metrics compared to the Premium AMD instance. The Intel instance delivers higher RPS rates for Redis operations, superior CPU performance, and more robust file I/O throughput. It also shows more consistent latency across various benchmarks, which indicates better overall performance stability. The Premium AMD instance, while still capable, trails behind in terms of throughput, CPU performance, and some Redis operations, although it does provide a slightly lower monthly fee. Ideal use cases for the Intel instance would be CPU-intensive tasks, high-traffic Redis operations, and scenarios demanding high I/O performance. The AMD instance could be better suited for more cost-sensitive scenarios or less demanding applications where the slight performance trade-off is acceptable.

From the friendly human:

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