We tested 3 different WordPress websites on all DigitalOcean droplets

We did comprehensive research on how different CPU models affect Wordpress website performance.

Here is a summary of our conclusions.

• PHP depends on CPU processing power meaning if you need better performance, it is important that you pick a CPU model that has a better official benchmark score – CPU matters.
• The number of CPU cores doesn’t affect the performance of PHP applications - PHP is not multi-threaded. The number of CPU cores will only help you handle a higher traffic.
• PHP string functions are more expensive than math functions.
• VPS instances with a larger amount of RAM memory have little or no impact on PHP performance.
• The best decision will be to use a few high CPU VPS instances with a load balancer, with a separate instance for MySQL DB
• A Standard $20 DigitalOcean droplet will give you a better PHP performance in average than a $640 DigitalOcean droplet.
• A High CPU $40 DigitalOcean droplet will give you the best PHP performance among DigitalOcean droplets.
• Dedicated vCPU give us more stable performance - no large loading time spikes
• Bad programmers are too expensive.

Please take a look at original research article with charts and all the data

Comments

[Slava Abakumov]

I'm writing this comment just to say "Thank you for your study, it's very helpful".

[Helen Anderson]

Hi there, Articles should not primarily be used for driving traffic to an article on another website. Please post the entire article here on DEV (if you have proper rights).