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

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've spun up 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 the New York area (or close to it). Without further ado, here's the results.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:00:52 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 $48.00 $56.00
RAM (GB) 8 8
CPU Cores 4 4
Storage (TB) 160 160
Storage Type SSD NVMe
Transfer (TB) 5 5

CPU

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Vendor GenuineIntel AuthenticAMD
Model Name DO-Regular DO-Premium-AMD
Clock Speed (MHz) 2,494.13 1,996.25
CPU Cache Size (KB) 4,096.00 512.00
BogoMips 4,988.26 3,992.50
Events per Second 849.54 1,535.42
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.91 0.59
Average Latency (ms) 1.18 0.65
Maximum Latency (ms) 4.42 0.89
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.42 0.69

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 3,950,075.58 4,867,578.39
Mebibytes per second 3,857.50 4,753.49
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.35 0.19
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Operations per second 3,923,868.51 4,347,879.44
Mebibytes per second 3,831.90 4,245.98
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.33 0.56
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Reads per Second 3,587.28 2,384.51
Writes per Second 2,391.52 1,589.67
Fsyncs per Second 7,652.96 5,095.64
Read Mebibytes per Second 56.05 37.26
Written Mebibytes per Second 37.37 24.84
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.07 0.11
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.81 9.42
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.28 0.58

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 699.95 325.10
Average Latency (ms) 814.66 435.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 911.13 487.90
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 909.80 484.44

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,599.00 5,392.00
Queries per second 35,990.00 53,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.41 1.37
Average Latency (ms) 2.77 1.85
Maximum Latency (ms) 75.96 3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.96 2.35

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,588.00 3,296.00
Queries per second 25,880.00 32,960.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 1.47
Average Latency (ms) 3.86 3.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 24.15 19.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 7.98 4.41

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,484.00 1,930.00
Queries per second 14,840.00 19,300.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.49 3.41
Average Latency (ms) 6.73 5.18
Maximum Latency (ms) 84.28 26.77
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 11.65 6.55

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,648.00 4,756.00
Queries per second 26,480.00 47,560.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.93 1.08
Average Latency (ms) 3.77 2.1
Maximum Latency (ms) 54.12 40.66
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 8.43 3.25

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,055,467.00 1,434,092.00
Queries per second 10,554,670.00 14,340,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 488.93 418.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 109,652.00 125,686.00
Queries per second 1,096,520.00 1,256,860.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.09 0.08
Maximum Latency (ms) 13.86 0.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.13 0.11

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 2,831.00 7,055.00
Queries per second 28,310.00 70,550.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.82 0.33
Average Latency (ms) 3.53 1.42
Maximum Latency (ms) 41.39 7.12
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 8.43 2.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,881.00 6,592.00
Queries per second 38,810.00 65,920.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.62 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 2.57 1.52
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.19 3.28
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.74 2.03

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,006.00 5,138.00
Queries per second 40,060.00 51,380.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.64 1.07
Average Latency (ms) 2.49 1.94
Maximum Latency (ms) 14.18 39.78
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.91 2.81

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,594.00 4,781.00
Queries per second 35,940.00 47,810.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.73 1.13
Average Latency (ms) 2.78 2.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 28.54 19.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 5.77 3.07

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
Transactions per second 16,967.00 41,513.00
Queries per second 169,670.00 415,130.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.04 0.05
Average Latency (ms) 0.59 0.24
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.13 11.7
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.91 1.67

Redis

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 55,991.04 62,073.25
PING_MBULK per Second 53,050.40 58,719.91
SET per Second 52,882.07 54,171.18
GET per Second 48,732.94 64,308.68
INCR per Second 51,072.52 55,648.30
LPUSH per Second 50,276.52 55,493.89
RPUSH per Second 48,402.71 52,938.06
LPOP per Second 47,415.84 62,539.09
RPOP per Second 55,493.89 66,269.05
SADD per Second 54,200.54 62,189.05
HSET per Second 54,764.51 55,157.20
SPOP per Second 47,014.57 54,674.69
ZADD per Second 55,248.62 55,035.77
ZPOPMIN per Second 54,288.82 55,035.77
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 27,548.21 37,355.25
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 15,467.90 21,715.53
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 10,514.14 16,084.93
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 8,056.72 14,990.26
MSET (10 keys) per Second 45,475.22 57,770.08

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.490.42
PING_MBULK0.500.44
SET0.510.48
GET0.570.40
INCR0.590.47
LPUSH0.670.47
RPUSH0.550.49
LPOP0.560.42
RPOP0.480.39
SADD0.490.42
HSET0.520.47
SPOP0.630.47
ZADD0.480.48
ZPOPMIN0.490.47
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)1.120.78
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)2.141.26
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)2.951.71
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)4.111.91
MSET (10 keys)0.660.47

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

When comparing the DigitalOcean Regular (8 GB, 4 Cores) and the Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) instances, the Regular instance showcases significantly higher performance in Redis benchmarks, especially with commands like LRANGE which are crucial for memory-intensive applications. However, the Premium AMD instance excels in CPU metrics and in specific database operations like bulk inserts and point selects for MySQL, demonstrating superior performance in CPU-bound tasks. The Premium AMD instance also provides faster file I/O operations, which could be beneficial for applications requiring high-speed read/write performance. Thus, the Regular instance is better suited for high-throughput, memory-intensive workloads, while the Premium AMD is ideal for CPU-heavy and high-speed I/O tasks.

From the friendly human:

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