OCZ Unveils Vertex 3 and Vertex 3 Pro SATA 6Gbps SSDs

It was only last month that OCZ announced its plans to accelerate the departure from the DRAM business, as to instead change focus towards morphing into a leading provider of solid-state drives. Although the news that OCZ would no longer be selling new memory was indeed surprising, just a quick look at future DRAM market forecasts made it clear memory prices are only going to continue to decline throughout most of 2011. While bviously a good thing for potential buyers, it’s nothing but bad news for DDR3 suppliers caught in the middle.

With that in mind, it is only fitting that in the final month of its DRAM business, OCZ Technology will start its new business solid-state drive with a huge bang. Today OCZ Technology is unveiling the new, much anticipated Vertex 3 and Vertex 3 Pro series SATA 6Gbps solid-state drives. With 550MB/s reads, 500MB/s writes, and a potential of 60,000 IOPS (4k random writes), these drives herald that the next generational leap in SSD performance has arrived. The Vertex 3’s impressive performance is thanks in no small part to SandForce’s new second generation controller, the SF-2200.

Ryan Peterson, CEO of OCZ Technology makes the point succinctly, “These storage solutions feature both the highest sequential speeds available with a SATA 6Gbps SSD and the highest IOPS of any current 2.5 inch SSD on the market today, allowing us to once again set the benchmark for industry leading SSD performance and reliability.”

Just as with the Vertex Pro and Vertex 2 Pro series, the Vertex 3 Pro targets enterprise customers and is priced accordingly, so consumers only have to concern themselves with the Vertex 3 and likely forthcoming Agility models. Thanks to the use of new 25nm IMFT NAND, prices on the Vertex 3 should land only slightly above those of the current Vertex 2 drives. It is fairly safe to say once initial demand is sated prices will once again begin to slip as the SF-2200 gradually replaces the SF-1200 solid-state drives currently on the market.

At least initially, Vertex 3 drives will be available in 120GB and 240GB configurations. We can already tell you straight out that any potential buyers absolutely must pair SF-2200 drives with SATA 6Gbp/s ports. The Vertex 2 can already max out SATA 3Gbp/s controllers in read operations, so unless potential owners want to enjoy Vertex 2 performance with a Vertex 3 SSD they will need to ensure they first have SATA 6Gbp/s ports available, and preferably those from Intel. On the bright side, users stuck with SATA 3Gbps ports should be able to score some nice deals as resellers eventually begin to clear out SF-1200 stock.

“The new Vertex 3 solid state drive series builds on the success of our previous two generations of products and delivers exceptional performance by utilizing fast synchronous mode 2Xnm MLC NAND flash technology,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group. “These storage solutions feature both the highest sequential speeds available with a SATA 6GBps SSD and the highest IOPS of any current 2.5 inch SSD on the market today, allowing us to once again set the benchmark for industry leading SSD performance and reliability.”