Both T3 and T3a instances offer the same configuration, CPU credits and network performance. The only difference that I find is T3 uses Intel processor while T3a uses AMD processor, while both are running at 2.5 GHz. Is this the only reason for reduced cost of T3a instances?
How does a customer make a choice between these two?
Best Answer
Per benchmarks at photographerstechsupport.com, t3 instances tend to be 10 to 20% faster than their equivalently spec'd t3a counterparts. I notice that the precision of some of the benchmark values is low enough (i.e. 0.06 vs 0.07, reported only to the nearest hundredth) that the actual difference could be anywhere between ~0 and 26%. However, based on multiple values it does seem the difference is about 15% overall.
This is reasonably close to the price difference of ~9%, making either choice a good option, depending on the compute performance need.