OCZ Introduces Lower Cost Octane; Meet the Petrol 6Gbps SSD

In what has to be a blur of names for regular users, OCZ Technology is launching the Petrol SSD family. Enthusiasts may still recall the recently launched Octane family, which harnessed the next generation of Indilinx controllers to deliver reasonably high levels of performance. Simply put, Petrol will be the lower-cost alternative to the Octane family, just as the well-known Agility brand is the more affordable version of the Vertex series.

Petrol will remain a 6Gbps SSD but will trade synchronous NAND for asynchronous NAND at the minor expense of performance. Even so, OCZ quotes up to 35K random read IOPS with up to 400MB/s sequential write performance, although no mention is made for random write IOPS. OCZ still quotes a remarkably low latency of 0.06ms for the Petrol solid-state drives. And since Petrol utilizes an Everest controller inside, performance applies evenly to both compressible and non-compressible data making that a non-issue.

OCZ indicates that prices will launch at $90, $150, $340, and $650 for the 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB models. This works out to be some minor savings over the Octane family, but given manufacturer pricing for SSDs has always been on the high side we will have to wait until the drives reach market and street prices settle to know for sure where these drives will stand. But one thing is for sure, given the Agility’s long-running success as the lower-cost alternative to the Vertex 3, the Petrol may just ignite a blazing reception of its own.