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MySQL 5.1 vs. 5.5 vs. 5.6 Performance Comparison

Reading Time: 2 minutes
General Results
  • MySQL 5.5 and 5.6 both performed significantly better than MySQL 5.1.
  • Read/Write and Read Only workloads testing requests per second show a marked improvement for both MySQL 5.5 and 5.6 over MySQL 5.1.
  • The 95th percentile response times (explained below) for both Read/Write and Read Only workloads on MySQL 5.5 and 5.6 were much lower (thus faster) than MySQL 5.1.
Requests per Second

MySQL 5.1 vs. 5.5 vs. 5.6 Performance Comparison - Requests per Second - Read and Write Operations

MySQL 5.1 vs. 5.5 vs. 5.6 Performance Comparison - Requests per Second - Read Operations

Response in Milliseconds

MySQL 5.1 vs. 5.5 vs. 5.6 Performance Comparison - Response in Milliseconds (ms) - Read/Write Operations

MySQL 5.1 vs. 5.5 vs. 5.6 Performance Comparison - Response in Milliseconds (ms) - Read Operations

Testing Methodologies

Hardware Used

  • Intel E3-1220 v2
  • 8 GB of RAM
  • 2 x Crucial M500 240 GB Drives
  • RAID 1, using an LSI 9260-4I RAID Card

Constants

  • Physical Server Hardware
  • OS: CentOS 6.5
  • Storm Dedicated
  • “Warm Up” Test Before Recording Results

Test Descriptions

  • All testing was done with Sysbench.
  • MySQL and Sysbench were running on the same host, meaning that both were communicating via Localhost.
  • “Warm-up” tests were conducted before recording results.
  • Requests per Second: The total number of requests the MySQL server was able to respond to per second.
  • 95th Percentile: The number, in milliseconds (ms), below which 95% of the response times fell.
  • Read/Write Workloads: MySQL performs Selects, Deletes, Updates, and Inserts.
  • Read Only Workloads: MySQL performs Selects only.

About the Author: J. Mays

As a previous contributor, JMays shares his insight with our Knowledge Base center. In our Knowledge Base, you'll be able to find how-to articles on Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora and much more!

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