AWS i7i.12xlargevsAWS i7ie.3xlarge

i7i.12xlarge pairs 48 vCPUs with 384GB of RAM at $4.5302/hr On-Demand (about $3262/mo at 24×7). i7ie.3xlarge pairs 12 vCPUs with 96GB at $1.5594/hr (~$1123/mo). i7ie.3xlarge is 66% cheaper per hour than i7i.12xlarge ($2.9708/hr gap).

Both are generation-7 storage-optimized (NVMe SSD) instances, but they run on different silicon: **i7i.12xlarge** is Intel Xeon (x86_64), **i7ie.3xlarge** is Intel Xeon (x86_64). AMD variants (suffix `a`) are typically 10% cheaper than Intel siblings at comparable single-thread performance. Graviton variants (suffix `g`) are usually 20–40% cheaper but require ARM64-compatible binaries — most modern Linux stacks are fine, but verify any compiled extensions, native modules, or third-party binaries before migrating. Same vCPU/RAM ratio, same network performance class, different processor.

Benchmark data for at least one of these instances is still being collected, so a direct performance-per-dollar comparison isn't possible yet. Sysbench scores are pending for i7i.12xlarge and 2819/16980 for i7ie.3xlarge. Check back as the benchmark queue completes — newer-generation instances typically score 10–30% higher on single-thread and 15–50% higher on multi-core vs the previous generation in the same series.

In practice, pick i7i.12xlarge when your workload is closer to storage-optimized (NVMe SSD) (I/O-bound work needing low-latency NVMe local storage — NoSQL, search). Pick i7ie.3xlarge when it's closer to storage-optimized (NVMe SSD) (I/O-bound work needing low-latency NVMe local storage — NoSQL, search). When neither side is obviously right, the cheaper hourly rate usually wins for fault-tolerant batch workloads, while the higher single-core score usually wins for latency-sensitive web traffic. The regional pricing tables linked from each instance page below show where each is currently cheapest — sometimes a >20% regional gap flips the comparison entirely.