VPS Showdown - January 2025 - Vultr Cloud Compute vs. High Frequency vs. High Performance AMD and Intel
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After last week's snafu with the data, I went into this week's post a bit more cautious. Instead of spinning up all of the instances at one time, I went ahead and spun up servers for each class individually. I would collect the benchmarks for the class, then destroy the servers before spinning up the next class.
Fortunately, the crap I was seeing last week didn't show up today. Each server class had the expected CPU manufacturer. I assuming last week I had mislabeled one or two of the server classes, which got things twisted.
So, this month's post is similar to my post last month. Instead of focusing on the nuanced instance classes for DigitalOcean, I'm doing the same for Vultr. Vultr offers multiple types of shared hosting options. Regular compute, High Frequency and High Performance. High Performance then comes in AMD and Intel flavors.
Not only is the naming confusing, but Vultr's new wizard is a bit confusing too. Last week the New York (NJ) instance location was labeled as Piscataway, NJ but this week they were renamed back. Also last week I wasn't able to figure out how the heck to disable backups with the wizard. This week, either it was easier to spot, or they changed something, and I was able to find it.Similar to all of my other comparisons, I've spun up three instances of each type. All of them are running Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, and all of them are in the New York / New Jersey geographic area.
Overview - Vultr Cloud Compute vs. High Frequency vs. High Performance AMD and High Performance Intel
| Version | |
|---|---|
| Linux Distro | Ubuntu 24.04 LTS |
| -------------- | ------------------ |
| Kernel Version | 6.8.0 |
| MySQL Version | 8.0.40 |
| Redis Version | 7.0.15 |
| Cloud Compute | High Frequency | High Performance AMD | High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Location | New York (NJ) | New York (NJ) | New York (NJ) | New York (NJ) |
| Monthly Price | $5/month | $6/month | $6/month | $6/month |
| Hourly Price | $0.007/hour | $0.008/hour | $0.008/hour | $0.008/hour |
| RAM | 1 GB | 1 GB | 1 GB | 1 GB |
| CPU | 1 Core | 1 Core | 1 Core | 1 Core |
| Storage | 25 GB | 32 GB | 25 GB | 25 GB |
| Storage Type | NVMe | NVMe | NVMe | NVMe |
| Transfer | 1 TB | 1 TB | 2 TB | 2 TB |
| Transfer Overage | $0.01/GB | $0.01/GB | $0.01/GB | $0.01/GB |
| Backups | $1.00/month | $1.20/month | $1.20/month | $1.20/month |
CPU Info
| Model Name | |
|---|---|
| Cloud Compute - Instance #1 | Intel Core Processor (Haswell, no TSX, IBRS) |
| Cloud Compute - Instance #2 | Intel Core Processor (Broadwell, no TSX, IBRS) |
| Cloud Compute - Instance #3 | Intel Core Processor (Broadwell, no TSX, IBRS) |
| High Frequency - All Instances | Intel Core Processor (Skylake, IBRS) |
| High Performance AMD - All Instances | AMD EPYC-Rome Processor |
| High Performance Intel - All Instances | Intel Xeon Processor (Cascadelake) |
| Cloud Compute | High Frequency | High Performance AMD | High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CPU MHz | 2,396.30 | 3,696.03 | 1,996.25 | 2,959.71 |
| Cache Size (KB) | 16,384.00 | 16,384.00 | 512.00 | 16,384.00 |
| BogoMips | 3,196.00 | 4,928.33 | 2,661.67 | 3,924.00 |
CPU
| Cloud Compute | High Frequency | High Performance AMD | High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Events per Second | 844.61 | 1,339.47 | 2,620.69 | 1,013.26 |
| Minimum (ms) | 1.08 | 0.73 | 0.28 | 0.87 |
| Average (ms) | 1.18 | 0.76 | 0.41 | 1.00 |
| Maximum (ms) | 3.66 | 3.14 | 9.15 | 9.56 |
Memory
Read
| Cloud Compute | High Frequency | High Performance AMD | High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ops per Second | 4,140,464.52 | 6,633,393.60 | 3,828,706.67 | 4,759,528.51 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Average (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Maximum (ms) | 0.73 | 0.54 | 2.00 | 2.64 |
Write
| Cloud Compute | High Frequency | High Performance AMD | High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ops per Second | 4,122,254.69 | 6,599,626.81 | 3,900,478.96 | 4,789,128.87 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Average (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Maximum (ms) | 0.99 | 1.71 | 6.20 | 0.81 |
File I/O
| Cloud Compute | High Frequency | High Performance AMD | High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reads per Second | 2,061.69 | 4,264.29 | 1,547.08 | 2,759.07 |
| Writes per Second | 1,374.41 | 2,842.88 | 1,031.39 | 1,839.36 |
| Fsyncs per Second | 4,403.10 | 9,103.03 | 3,309.01 | 5,896.82 |
| Minimum (ms) | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 |
| Average (ms) | 0.13 | 0.06 | 0.18 | 0.10 |
| Maximum (ms) | 15.20 | 2.31 | 45.40 | 13.82 |
MySQL
Read Only
| Cloud Compute | High Frequency | High Performance AMD | High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transactions per Second | 4,044.67 | 7,197.00 | 4,351.67 | 4,562.00 |
| Queries per Second | 64,714.67 | 115,152.00 | 69,626.67 | 72,992.00 |
| Minimum (ms) | 1.78 | 1.08 | 1.48 | 1.18 |
| Average (ms) | 2.48 | 1.41 | 2.35 | 2.26 |
| Maximum (ms) | 20.03 | 9.96 | 37.35 | 21.03 |
Write Only
| Cloud Compute | High Frequency | High Performance AMD | High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transactions per Second | 2,987.33 | 6,346.67 | 1,848.00 | 3,517.33 |
| Queries per Second | 17,924.00 | 38,080.00 | 11,088.00 | 21,104.00 |
| Minimum (ms) | 1.73 | 0.80 | 1.68 | 1.11 |
| Average (ms) | 3.41 | 1.60 | 6.29 | 3.36 |
| Maximum (ms) | 23.28 | 10.92 | 112.57 | 21.96 |
Read Write
| Cloud Compute | High Frequency | High Performance AMD | High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Transactions per Second | 1,266.00 | 2,859.67 | 1,138.00 | 1,540.33 |
| Queries per Second | 25,320.00 | 57,193.33 | 22,760.00 | 30,806.67 |
| Minimum (ms) | 4.21 | 2.20 | 3.84 | 3.34 |
| Average (ms) | 7.90 | 3.57 | 9.11 | 6.84 |
| Maximum (ms) | 40.02 | 12.72 | 65.38 | 28.84 |
Redis
| Cloud Compute | High Frequency | High Performance AMD | High Performance Intel | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| PING_INLINE | 36,636.19 | 55,203.23 | 32,311.81 | 42,848.67 |
| PING_MBULK | 37,858.72 | 56,249.39 | 29,517.24 | 41,260.50 |
| SET | 37,242.89 | 55,449.03 | 30,208.70 | 40,806.46 |
| GET | 37,686.02 | 55,560.97 | 30,586.48 | 42,217.77 |
| INCR | 37,923.82 | 55,204.24 | 29,708.78 | 40,850.17 |
| LPUSH | 36,905.69 | 55,300.66 | 29,848.87 | 40,727.31 |
| RPUSH | 36,868.25 | 54,835.17 | 30,210.01 | 41,096.98 |
| LPOP | 36,806.22 | 54,123.12 | 30,421.97 | 40,030.81 |
| RPOP | 36,592.64 | 53,527.74 | 31,887.87 | 40,837.44 |
| SADD | 37,784.97 | 55,290.02 | 30,717.04 | 40,525.56 |
| HSET | 36,981.95 | 54,557.64 | 31,154.15 | 42,900.89 |
| SPOP | 38,007.79 | 55,527.75 | 31,957.90 | 44,700.93 |
| LRANGE_100 (first 100 elements) | 24,722.29 | 34,594.45 | 20,418.58 | 26,114.89 |
| LRANGE_300 (first 300 elements) | 13,110.50 | 17,595.94 | 11,678.61 | 12,949.49 |
| LRANGE_500 (first 500 elements) | 9,050.78 | 12,136.68 | 8,509.20 | 8,693.71 |
| LRANGE_600 (first 600 elements) | 7,821.14 | 10,537.06 | 7,688.88 | 7,132.14 |
| MSET (10 keys) | 34,634.48 | 50,324.06 | 29,131.20 | 37,211.34 |
Conclusion
Admittedly, I wasn't really sure what to expect this month, aside from the slightly more expensive plans performing better. Other than the raw clock speed of the processors, the High Frequency plan shined in every category.
Gotta love the marketing jargon for the plan names, as I really would have expected "high performance" to shine over whatever "high frequency" means.
Of course, you need to weigh out your needs, as the high performance plans do actually offer more bandwidth. High frequency seemingly more powerful in the raw metrics, but also offering a bit more storage.
While this may change in the future, I'll be sticking to the High Frequency Vultr instances when doing future comparisons with Linode and DigitalOcean.
If you have found these posts informative and helpful in searching for a new hosting provider, please consider using one of the links below when signing up:
- DigitalOcean, new accounts receive $200 in credit (good for 60 days)
- Linode, new accounts receive $100 in credit (also good for 60 days)
- UpCloud, new accounts receive €25 in credit (yes, that’s in Euros)
- Vultr, new accounts also receive $100 in credit (good for only 14 days)
:wq
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