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

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Fresh benchmarks coming at ya. Today I've spun up some brand new instance from DigitalOcean and Vultr and did some benchmarking. 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 – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Last Benchmarked Sun, 31 May 2026 20:00:52 GMT Mon, 01 Jun 2026 07:00:52 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 $12.00
RAM (GB) 8 2
CPU Cores 4 1
Storage (TB) 160 50
Storage Type NVMe NVMe
Transfer (TB) 5 3

CPU

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Vendor AuthenticAMD GenuineIntel
Model Name DO-Premium-AMD Intel Xeon Processor (Cascadelake)
Clock Speed (MHz) 1,996.25 2,893.17
CPU Cache Size (KB) 512.00 16,384.00
BogoMips 3,992.50 5,786.33
Events per Second 1,535.42 1,048.47
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.59 0.83
Average Latency (ms) 0.65 0.95
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.89 5.25
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.69 1.21

Memory

Memory Read

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,867,578.39 4,854,174.96
Mebibytes per second 4,753.49 4,740.41
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.19 2.23
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

Memory Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Operations per second 4,347,879.44 4,942,528.76
Mebibytes per second 4,245.98 4,826.69
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0 0
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.56 4.94
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

File I/O

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Reads per Second 2,384.51 4,132.87
Writes per Second 1,589.67 2,755.21
Fsyncs per Second 5,095.64 8,825.96
Read Mebibytes per Second 37.26 64.58
Written Mebibytes per Second 24.84 43.05
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.11 0.06
Maximum Latency (ms) 9.42 2.15
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.58 0.19

Mutex

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Minimum Latency (ms) 325.10 1,776.90
Average Latency (ms) 435.66 1,797.61
Maximum Latency (ms) 487.90 1,811.62
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 484.44 1,803.47

MySQL

MySQL Read-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,392.00 7,971.00
Queries per second 53,920.00 79,710.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.37 1.06
Average Latency (ms) 1.85 1.25
Maximum Latency (ms) 3 4.3
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.35 1.58

MySQL Write-only

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 3,296.00 7,352.00
Queries per second 32,960.00 73,520.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.47 0.83
Average Latency (ms) 3.03 1.36
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.45 4.44
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 4.41 2

MySQL Read/Write

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,930.00 3,189.00
Queries per second 19,300.00 31,890.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 3.41 2.31
Average Latency (ms) 5.18 3.13
Maximum Latency (ms) 26.77 15.9
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 6.55 4.18

MySQL INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,756.00 13,921.00
Queries per second 47,560.00 139,210.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.08 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 2.1 0.71
Maximum Latency (ms) 40.66 3.82
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.25 0.97

MySQL Bulk INSERT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 1,434,092.00 1,230,217.00
Queries per second 14,340,920.00 12,302,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0 0
Average Latency (ms) 0.01 0.01
Maximum Latency (ms) 418.16 357.55
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0 0

MySQL SELECT

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 125,686.00 207,049.00
Queries per second 1,256,860.00 2,070,490.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.08 0.05
Maximum Latency (ms) 0.84 2.95
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 0.11 0.07

MySQL SELECT (Random Points)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 7,055.00 6,025.00
Queries per second 70,550.00 60,250.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.33 0.49
Average Latency (ms) 1.42 1.66
Maximum Latency (ms) 7.12 4.45
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.07 2.35

MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 6,592.00 7,229.00
Queries per second 65,920.00 72,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.43 0.53
Average Latency (ms) 1.52 1.38
Maximum Latency (ms) 3.28 5.38
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.03 1.96

MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 5,138.00 12,590.00
Queries per second 51,380.00 125,900.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.07 0.44
Average Latency (ms) 1.94 0.79
Maximum Latency (ms) 39.78 6.03
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 2.81 1.23

MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 4,781.00 13,129.00
Queries per second 47,810.00 131,290.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 1.13 0.43
Average Latency (ms) 2.09 0.76
Maximum Latency (ms) 19.23 3.97
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 3.07 1.08

MySQL DELETE

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
Transactions per second 41,513.00 111,517.00
Queries per second 415,130.00 1,115,170.00
Minimum Latency (ms) 0.05 0.04
Average Latency (ms) 0.24 0.09
Maximum Latency (ms) 11.7 10.16
95th Percentile Latency (ms) 1.67 0.18

Redis

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE per Second 62,073.25 43,252.59
PING_MBULK per Second 58,719.91 43,917.44
SET per Second 54,171.18 44,189.13
GET per Second 64,308.68 45,228.40
INCR per Second 55,648.30 44,662.79
LPUSH per Second 55,493.89 42,936.88
RPUSH per Second 52,938.06 42,955.32
LPOP per Second 62,539.09 39,339.10
RPOP per Second 66,269.05 43,572.98
SADD per Second 62,189.05 43,878.89
HSET per Second 55,157.20 43,010.75
SPOP per Second 54,674.69 43,497.17
ZADD per Second 55,035.77 42,034.47
ZPOPMIN per Second 55,035.77 44,052.86
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second 37,355.25 25,893.32
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second 21,715.53 13,837.00
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second 16,084.93 8,880.99
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second 14,990.26 8,015.39
MSET (10 keys) per Second 57,770.08 38,865.14

Redis Average Latency (ms)

DigitalOcean – Premium AMD (8 GB, 4 Cores) Vultr – High Performance Intel (2 GB)
PING_INLINE0.420.75
PING_MBULK0.440.75
SET0.480.75
GET0.400.73
INCR0.470.73
LPUSH0.470.76
RPUSH0.490.77
LPOP0.420.86
RPOP0.390.76
SADD0.420.74
HSET0.470.76
SPOP0.470.75
ZADD0.480.78
ZPOPMIN0.470.74
LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements)0.781.30
LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements)1.262.56
LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements)1.713.99
LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements)1.914.43
MSET (10 keys)0.470.87

Conclusion

From the friendly robots:

Upon analyzing the benchmarks, the DigitalOcean Premium AMD instance outperforms the Vultr High Performance Intel instance across most metrics, notably in terms of CPU performance, Redis operations per second, and overall latency for a majority of commands. The DigitalOcean instance provides better throughput for file I/O operations and displays lower latency in memory operations. Conversely, the Vultr instance excels in handling higher mutex operation latencies but provides higher throughput in MySQL operations. Given these results, the DigitalOcean instance is more suited for CPU-intensive workloads and applications that require rapid I/O and memory operations, while the Vultr instance may be preferable for workloads that require extensive database operations and can tolerate higher mutex latencies.

From the friendly human:

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