If you are looking for raw speed per dollar, Hetzner Cloud is widely considered the industry leader. While hyperscalers like AWS or Azure offer higher absolute performance ceilings (at significantly higher costs), Hetzner consistently outperforms DigitalOcean, Linode, and Vultr in standard benchmarks for a fraction of the price.

We ran the Yet-Another-Bench-Script (YABS) on two different 4-core Hetzner Cloud instances to visualize the generational gap between their older Intel infrastructure and their modern AMD EPYC offerings.

The results reveal a massive performance disparity that highlights why choosing the right architecture matters more than just core count.

1. The Contenders

Hetzner cloud plans	Hetzner CX33	Hetzner CPX32
Processor	Intel Xeon (Skylake)	AMD EPYC Genoa (Zen 4)
Cores	4 @ ~2.1 GHz	4 @ ~2.4 GHz
RAM	7.6 GiB	7.6 GiB
Distro	Debian 12 (Bookworm)	Debian 12 (Bookworm)
Location	Nuremberg, Germany (FSN)	Nuremberg, Germany (FSN)

Note on Architecture: “Skylake” is an Intel architecture from roughly 2015–2017. “Genoa” is AMD’s Zen 4 architecture released in late 2022. We are effectively comparing hardware that is 5+ years apart.

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2. CPU Performance: A Generational Leap

The most shocking difference is in raw compute power. The AMD EPYC Genoa instance absolutely demolishes the older Intel Xeon server.

Geekbench 6 Scores

Metric	Intel Xeon (Skylake)	AMD EPYC (Genoa)	Difference
Single-Core	704	2,027	~2.9x Faster
Multi-Core	1,800	6,114	~3.4x Faster

Analysis:

• Single-Core: The AMD server is nearly 300% faster. This is crucial for applications that cannot easily parallelize, such as game servers (Minecraft, Rust), older PHP applications, or Node.js services.

• Multi-Core: With a score of over 6,000, the AMD server behaves like a modern desktop workstation. The Intel server, scoring 1,800, struggles to compete with even modern entry-level mobile phones.

3. Storage Performance: Bandwidth Unleashed

While both servers use fast NVMe storage, the AMD server appears to benefit from a newer PCIe generation (likely PCIe Gen 4 or Gen 5), allowing for significantly higher throughput.

Disk Speed (fio)

Metric	Intel Xeon	AMD EPYC	Impact
4k Random IOPS	~48.3k	~79.0k	Database transactions per second.
Sequential Read	1.63 GB/s	5.82 GB/s	Large file copying/backups.
Sequential Write	2.19 GB/s	5.78 GB/s	Writing logs/databases.

Analysis: The Intel server caps out around 2 GB/s, which is typical for older NVMe drives or PCIe Gen 3 limitations. The AMD server hits nearly 6 GB/s, making it vastly superior for data-heavy tasks like video processing, large database imports, or compiling code.

Conclusion & Verdict

The data presents a clear case for upgrading or choosing the newer architecture.

• The Intel (Skylake) Server is a “Utility” server. It is perfectly adequate for low-power tasks like hosting a static website, a DNS server, a small VPN, or a development environment that sits idle most of the time.

• The AMD (Genoa) Server is a “Powerhouse.” It is capable of running production workloads, heavy databases, CI/CD pipelines, and modern game servers without breaking a sweat.

Final Recommendation: If the price difference is minimal (which is often the case with Hetzner’s cloud pricing), always choose the AMD EPYC option. You are getting nearly triple the performance for your money.