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

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New day, new benchmarks. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and ran some benchmarks. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and all resided in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.

Overview

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 31 May 2026 20:00:52 GMT Sun, 31 May 2026 15:00:52 GMT
Linux Distro Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64
Kernel Version 6.8.0-71-generic 6.8.0-117-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 Newark, NJ
Monthly Price $56.00 $24.00
RAM (GB) 8 4
CPU Cores 4 2
Storage (TB) 160 128
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 5 3

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS, no TSX)
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 3,791.97
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 3,992.50 7,583.94
Events per Second 1,535.42 1,574.56
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.62
Average Latency (ms) 0.65 0.63
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.89 2.75
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.69 0.68

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,867,578.39 7,748,150.36
Mebibytes per second 4,753.49 7,566.55
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.19 0.07
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Operations per second 4,347,879.44 7,774,132.12
Mebibytes per second 4,245.98 7,591.93
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.56 0.27
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Reads per Second 2,384.51 7,795.87
Writes per Second 1,589.67 5,197.25
Fsyncs per Second 5,095.64 16,639.28
Read Mebibytes per Second 37.26 121.81
Written Mebibytes per Second 24.84 81.21
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 0.03
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.42 0.85
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.58 0.12

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Minimum Latency (ms) 325.10 508.91
Average Latency (ms) 435.66 536.68
Maximum Latency (ms) 487.90 555.84
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 484.44 559.50

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,392.00 10,239.00
Queries per second 53,920.00 102,390.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 0.89
Average Latency (ms) 1.85 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 3 3.09
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 1.1

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 3,296.00 9,867.00
Queries per second 32,960.00 98,670.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.47 0.67
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 1.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.45 2.05
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 1.27

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,930.00 4,833.00
Queries per second 19,300.00 48,330.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.41 1.66
Average Latency (ms) 5.18 2.07
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.77 13
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 2.48

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,756.00 16,634.00
Queries per second 47,560.00 166,340.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.08 0.4
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 0.6
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.66 11.65
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.25 0.8

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 1,434,092.00 2,395,217.00
Queries per second 14,340,920.00 23,952,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 418.16 203.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 125,686.00 234,845.00
Queries per second 1,256,860.00 2,348,450.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.04
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.84 0.65
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.05

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 7,055.00 10,869.00
Queries per second 70,550.00 108,690.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 0.26
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 0.92
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.12 2.74
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.07 1.34

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 6,592.00 10,176.00
Queries per second 65,920.00 101,760.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.38
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 0.98
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.28 3.71
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 1.3

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 5,138.00 16,370.00
Queries per second 51,380.00 163,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.39
Average Latency (ms) 1.94 0.61
Maximum Latency (ms) 39.78 1.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 0.81

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 4,781.00 16,970.00
Queries per second 47,810.00 169,700.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.39
Average Latency (ms) 2.09 0.59
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.23 1.83
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 0.81

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
Transactions per second 41,513.00 155,757.00
Queries per second 415,130.00 1,557,570.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.03
Average Latency (ms) 0.24 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.7 2.85
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.67 0.08

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE per Second 62,073.25 85,910.65
PING_MBULK per Second 58,719.91 87,796.30
SET per Second 54,171.18 89,047.20
GET per Second 64,308.68 88,105.73
INCR per Second 55,648.30 87,032.20
LPUSH per Second 55,493.89 87,032.20
RPUSH per Second 52,938.06 88,573.96
LPOP per Second 62,539.09 88,417.33
RPOP per Second 66,269.05 89,525.52
SADD per Second 62,189.05 88,183.43
HSET per Second 55,157.20 89,047.20
SPOP per Second 54,674.69 86,956.52
ZADD per Second 55,035.77 88,183.43
ZPOPMIN per Second 55,035.77 87,260.03
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 37,355.25 63,251.11
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 21,715.53 34,940.60
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,084.93 25,700.33
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,990.26 22,537.75
MSET (10 keys) per Second 57,770.08 85,836.91

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Frequency Intel (4 GB, 2 Cores)
PING_INLINE0.420.31
PING_MBULK0.440.29
SET0.480.29
GET0.400.29
INCR0.470.30
LPUSH0.470.30
RPUSH0.490.29
LPOP0.420.29
RPOP0.390.29
SADD0.420.29
HSET0.470.29
SPOP0.470.30
ZADD0.480.30
ZPOPMIN0.470.30
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.780.46
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.260.74
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.710.99
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.911.15
MSET (10 keys)0.470.30

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Upon comparing the benchmark results from both the DigitalOcean and Vultr instances, the Vultr High Frequency Intel instance shows superior performance in terms of raw processing speed across various metrics, particularly in Redis operations, where it achieves significantly higher requests per second with lower average latencies. This suggests that for workloads heavily reliant on high-throughput, low-latency data processing like caching or real-time analytics, the Vultr instance might be more suitable. Conversely, the DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance demonstrates more balanced performance across CPU, file I/O, and memory operations, with notably lower latencies in file I/O and memory operations, making it a better choice for applications requiring robust I/O performance and moderate CPU usage such as databases, web servers, or general-purpose computing where storage operations are frequent. Therefore, depending on the specific needs of the workload, the Vultr instance excels in high-frequency, low-latency tasks while the DigitalOcean instance shines in balanced, I/O-intensive applications.

From the friendly human:

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