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

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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 all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Let's get into the numbers.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 31 May 2026 08:00:52 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 $18.00 $56.00
RAM (GB) 2 8
CPU Cores 2 4
Storage (TB) 60 160
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 3 5

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Regular 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 813.64 1,535.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.59
Average Latency (ms) 1.23 0.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 8.88 0.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.44 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 3,863,161.54 4,867,578.39
Mebibytes per second 3,772.62 4,753.49
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 6.47 0.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 3,937,174.33 4,347,879.44
Mebibytes per second 3,844.90 4,245.98
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.03 0.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 1,604.65 2,384.51
Writes per Second 1,069.77 1,589.67
Fsyncs per Second 3,429.94 5,095.64
Read Mebibytes per Second 25.07 37.26
Written Mebibytes per Second 16.72 24.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.16 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.88 9.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.4 0.58

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 1,275.46 325.10
Average Latency (ms) 1,454.38 435.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 1,488.79 487.90
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1,479.41 484.44

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,594.00 5,392.00
Queries per second 15,940.00 53,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.68 1.37
Average Latency (ms) 6.27 1.85
Maximum Latency (ms) 87.36 3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 24.38 2.35

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,576.00 3,296.00
Queries per second 15,760.00 32,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 2 1.47
Average Latency (ms) 6.34 3.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 34.54 19.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 14.46 4.41

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 582.00 1,930.00
Queries per second 5,820.00 19,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.92 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 17.17 5.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 125.99 26.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 47.47 6.55

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,759.00 4,756.00
Queries per second 27,590.00 47,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.36 1.08
Average Latency (ms) 3.62 2.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 34.11 40.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.04 3.25

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) 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) 459.02 418.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 54,163.00 125,686.00
Queries per second 541,630.00 1,256,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.18 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 23.62 0.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.43 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,859.00 7,055.00
Queries per second 38,590.00 70,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.61 0.33
Average Latency (ms) 2.59 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 53.87 7.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 2.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,179.00 6,592.00
Queries per second 71,790.00 65,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.38 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 1.39 1.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.44 3.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.86 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,435.00 5,138.00
Queries per second 24,350.00 51,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.15 1.07
Average Latency (ms) 4.1 1.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 52.68 39.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 8.9 2.81

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,495.00 4,781.00
Queries per second 24,950.00 47,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 1.13
Average Latency (ms) 4 2.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.4 19.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 8.9 3.07

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 13,719.00 41,513.00
Queries per second 137,190.00 415,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.73 0.24
Maximum Latency (ms) 38.65 11.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.25 1.67

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 78,740.16 62,073.25
PING_MBULK per Second 77,821.02 58,719.91
SET per Second 75,815.01 54,171.18
GET per Second 75,414.78 64,308.68
INCR per Second 76,628.36 55,648.30
LPUSH per Second 76,511.09 55,493.89
RPUSH per Second 79,617.83 52,938.06
LPOP per Second 79,808.46 62,539.09
RPOP per Second 74,074.07 66,269.05
SADD per Second 77,101.00 62,189.05
HSET per Second 74,294.21 55,157.20
SPOP per Second 72,358.90 54,674.69
ZADD per Second 78,616.35 55,035.77
ZPOPMIN per Second 73,800.73 55,035.77
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 53,705.69 37,355.25
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 27,218.29 21,715.53
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 18,573.55 16,084.93
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 16,578.25 14,990.26
MSET (10 keys) per Second 73,206.44 57,770.08

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.330.42
PING_MBULK0.330.44
SET0.350.48
GET0.340.40
INCR0.410.47
LPUSH0.340.47
RPUSH0.330.49
LPOP0.330.42
RPOP0.350.39
SADD0.340.42
HSET0.350.47
SPOP0.360.47
ZADD0.330.48
ZPOPMIN0.350.47
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.520.78
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.131.26
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.471.71
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.621.91
MSET (10 keys)0.360.47

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

In comparing the two DigitalOcean instances, the Regular (2 GB, 2 Cores) shows strong performance for Redis operations, achieving high requests per second with relatively low latencies, particularly in simple commands like PING_INLINE and basic set/get operations. However, it lags in more complex operations like LRANGE, which involve larger data sets, indicating potential bottlenecks in handling memory-intensive tasks. The Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) offers superior performance across the board with higher requests per second and lower latencies in Redis operations, though it does show a dip in performance for very large LRANGE operations. The AMD instance has more RAM and CPU power, resulting in better overall throughput, lower latencies for file I/O, and memory operations, making it a better choice for CPU-intensive, I/O-heavy workloads. For simpler tasks and cost-conscious applications, the Regular instance is adequate, but for more demanding applications requiring high throughput and lower latency, the Premium AMD instance is the better choice.

From the friendly human:

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