DigitalOcean Regular (2 GB) vs. DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores)
New day, new benchmarks. Today I've spun up brand new instance from DigitalOcean to run some benchmarks on. All instances were spun up with Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 and were created in or around the New York / New Jersey area. Time to see who showed up today.
Overview
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Last Benchmarked | Tue, 12 May 2026 23:00:52 GMT | Tue, 12 May 2026 07:00:52 GMT |
| Linux Distro | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS x64 |
| Kernel Version | 6.8.0-71-generic | 6.8.0-71-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 | $12.00 | $24.00 |
| RAM (GB) | 2 | 2 |
| CPU Cores | 1 | 2 |
| Storage (TB) | 50 | 90 |
| Storage Type | SSD | NVMe |
| Transfer (TB) | 2 | 3 |
CPU
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | GenuineIntel | GenuineIntel |
| Model Name | DO-Regular | DO-Premium-Intel |
| Clock Speed (MHz) | 2,294.61 | 2,494.14 |
| CPU Cache Size (KB) | 4,096.00 | 4,096.00 |
| BogoMips | 4,589.21 | 4,988.27 |
| Events per Second | 408.72 | 1,059.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.98 | 0.89 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.44 | 0.94 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 30.57 | 1.34 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.1 | 1.06 |
Memory
Memory Read
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 1,633,276.41 | 4,660,363.26 |
| Mebibytes per second | 1,595.00 | 4,551.14 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.35 | 0.1 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
Memory Write
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Operations per second | 1,592,941.48 | 4,914,287.53 |
| Mebibytes per second | 1,555.61 | 4,799.11 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 5.53 | 0.67 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
File I/O
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 1,584.78 | 3,485.18 |
| Writes per Second | 1,056.52 | 2,323.39 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 3,385.97 | 7,444.43 |
| Read Mebibytes per Second | 24.76 | 54.46 |
| Written Mebibytes per Second | 16.51 | 36.30 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.16 | 0.07 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 20.31 | 8.73 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.51 | 0.22 |
Mutex
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 2,434.32 | 779.73 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2,473.55 | 847.67 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 2,489.41 | 901.36 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2,493.86 | 893.56 |
MySQL
MySQL Read-only
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 4,752.00 | 7,533.00 |
| Queries per second | 47,520.00 | 75,330.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.23 | 1.16 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.1 | 1.33 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 5.76 | 3.6 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 2.66 | 1.64 |
MySQL Write-only
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,930.00 | 6,869.00 |
| Queries per second | 19,300.00 | 68,690.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 2.65 | 0.85 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 5.18 | 1.45 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 56.83 | 11.9 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 7.98 | 2.07 |
MySQL Read/Write
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 1,306.00 | 2,892.00 |
| Queries per second | 13,060.00 | 28,920.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 4.6 | 2.12 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 7.65 | 3.45 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 28.54 | 17.19 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 10.09 | 5 |
MySQL INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,148.00 | 11,066.00 |
| Queries per second | 31,480.00 | 110,660.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.72 | 0.48 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.17 | 0.9 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 32.67 | 22.36 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.41 | 1.37 |
MySQL Bulk INSERT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 669,209.00 | 1,346,717.00 |
| Queries per second | 6,692,090.00 | 13,467,170.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.02 | 0.01 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 772.1 | 381.09 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0 | 0 |
MySQL SELECT
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 136,020.00 | 194,784.00 |
| Queries per second | 1,360,200.00 | 1,947,840.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.04 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.07 | 0.05 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 3.33 | 1.7 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 0.11 | 0.07 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Points)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,617.00 | 6,550.00 |
| Queries per second | 36,170.00 | 65,500.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.82 | 0.64 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 2.76 | 1.52 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 12.27 | 5.13 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.82 | 2.03 |
MySQL SELECT (Random Ranges)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,087.00 | 7,029.00 |
| Queries per second | 30,870.00 | 70,290.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.67 | 0.45 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.23 | 1.42 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 8.52 | 4.44 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 5.18 | 2.07 |
MySQL UPDATE (Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 2,586.00 | 10,466.00 |
| Queries per second | 25,860.00 | 104,660.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.8 | 0.48 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.86 | 0.95 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 45.13 | 9.14 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 6.21 | 1.47 |
MySQL UPDATE (Non-Indexed)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 3,094.00 | 11,675.00 |
| Queries per second | 30,940.00 | 116,750.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 1.83 | 0.47 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 3.23 | 0.86 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 35.75 | 12.01 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 4.65 | 1.27 |
MySQL DELETE
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| Transactions per second | 19,562.00 | 124,444.00 |
| Queries per second | 195,620.00 | 1,244,440.00 |
| Minimum Latency (ms) | 0.04 | 0.04 |
| Average Latency (ms) | 0.51 | 0.08 |
| Maximum Latency (ms) | 32.94 | 13.22 |
| 95th Percentile Latency (ms) | 3.02 | 0.1 |
Redis
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE per Second | 39,729.84 | 73,691.97 |
| PING_MBULK per Second | 42,176.30 | 85,616.44 |
| SET per Second | 40,833.00 | 95,057.03 |
| GET per Second | 34,590.11 | 100,704.94 |
| INCR per Second | 35,410.77 | 96,246.39 |
| LPUSH per Second | 39,184.95 | 91,911.76 |
| RPUSH per Second | 36,509.68 | 87,412.59 |
| LPOP per Second | 36,791.76 | 101,522.84 |
| RPOP per Second | 38,834.95 | 102,354.15 |
| SADD per Second | 35,727.05 | 85,178.88 |
| HSET per Second | 35,790.98 | 93,023.25 |
| SPOP per Second | 39,478.88 | 99,900.09 |
| ZADD per Second | 38,850.04 | 101,729.40 |
| ZPOPMIN per Second | 40,338.84 | 101,729.40 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) per Second | 17,461.15 | 53,821.31 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) per Second | 7,711.29 | 30,525.03 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) per Second | 4,860.50 | 19,857.03 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) per Second | 4,094.67 | 14,940.98 |
| MSET (10 keys) per Second | 32,041.01 | 84,245.99 |
Redis Average Latency (ms)
| DigitalOcean – Regular (2 GB) | DigitalOcean – Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) | |
|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 0.83 | 0.36 |
| PING_MBULK | 0.78 | 0.33 |
| SET | 0.82 | 0.27 |
| GET | 0.94 | 0.26 |
| INCR | 0.93 | 0.33 |
| LPUSH | 0.85 | 0.28 |
| RPUSH | 0.91 | 0.30 |
| LPOP | 0.92 | 0.26 |
| RPOP | 0.87 | 0.26 |
| SADD | 0.92 | 0.31 |
| HSET | 0.93 | 0.29 |
| SPOP | 0.84 | 0.26 |
| ZADD | 0.86 | 0.26 |
| ZPOPMIN | 0.82 | 0.27 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 2.05 | 0.54 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 4.59 | 1.04 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 7.19 | 1.38 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 8.42 | 1.93 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 1.12 | 0.40 |
Conclusion
From the friendly robots:
Comparing the benchmarks, the DigitalOcean Premium Intel (2 GB, 2 Cores) instance significantly outperforms the Regular (2 GB) instance across most metrics, particularly in Redis operations, where the rps (requests per second) and latency are notably better, showcasing superior multi-threading capabilities and CPU performance. The Premium instance also excels in file I/O operations and memory management, reflecting faster read/write speeds and lower latencies. MySQL operations also benefit from the higher CPU count and better overall performance. Given these substantial improvements, the Premium Intel instance is ideal for workloads that require high concurrency, lower latency, and better throughput, such as high-traffic web services, database-heavy applications, or any scenario demanding superior CPU and memory performance.
From the friendly human:
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