Cost Optimisation
AWS Graviton3 vs Intel vs AMD: Which EC2 Processor Saves Most in 2025?
Three Processor Architectures
AWS offers Intel (x86), AMD EPYC (x86), and ARM Graviton3. Each has different price-performance trade-offs.
Price Comparison — 8 vCPU General Purpose
| Instance | Processor | On-Demand/hr | vs Intel |
|---|---|---|---|
| m7i.2xlarge | Intel Sapphire Rapids | $0.4032 | Baseline |
| m7a.2xlarge | AMD EPYC Genoa | $0.4290 | +6% |
| m7g.2xlarge | ARM Graviton3 | $0.3264 | -19% |
Graviton Wins For
- Linux-only workloads (no Windows support)
- Containerised microservices — most Docker images have ARM builds
- Java, Go, Python applications
- Web servers, API servers, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Redis
Intel/AMD Wins For
- Windows Server workloads
- Legacy software without ARM builds
- Applications with x86-specific binary dependencies
Switching from m6i to m7g saves 19% immediately for Linux workloads — one of the easiest EC2 cost optimisations available.
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