When bare metal beats virtualization
A dedicated server gives you the entire machine: no neighbors competing for CPU cache or disk I/O, no hypervisor overhead, and hardware you can specify. That matters for database servers with strict latency budgets, virtualization hosts where you want to run your own hypervisor, high-throughput game node clusters, workloads with data-residency or compliance requirements, and anything that needs sustained full-CPU utilization rather than short bursts.