DigitalOcean's disk performance got order of magnitude worse. Compare the following test result with the ones that I did last year, when they started to support Virtio:
- DigitalOcean 512 (February 2013): https://gist.github.com/kenn/4741999
- DigitalOcean 512 with Virtio (February 2013): https://gist.github.com/kenn/4742470
Probably DO started to throttle the I/O on the cheaper droplets, but the result is poor overall.