How much faster is MyISAM compared to InnoDB?

Question

People say InnoDB is not so fast like MyISAM. But how much slower? Just as a rule of thumb in the wind, of course. I mean... is it usually 0.5x as fast as MyISAM? or even worse? Or does the average visitor not recognize any temporal difference when surfing an MyISAM platform vs. same thing with InnoDB?

Answer 1

I'd be very surprised if you noticed any practical real world difference unless you're running a very large/resource intensive web site.

There are some (albeit quite old) benchmarks out there (here for example), but your experience will obviously differ depending on your specific usage pattern.

Answer 2

It can be a big difference that depends on how you use the database in question. For example - select count(*) queries are cheap when run on a myisam table but (can be) really slow when run on an innodb table. Also a lot of people don't configure their installation for innodb performance - especially if they're used to myisam which performs pretty well on a rather default mysql installation.

My advice would be to run your own tests by taking a couple of top queries and running them against myisam tables and then innodb versions. Also head over to http://www.mysqlperformanceblog.com/ for tips on how to tune innodb to get the most out of it.