OCZ Releases Vertex 3 SSD With 20nm Flash

News
By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

OCZ's new Vertex 3.20 is an update of the Vertex 3 SSD and features 20 nm lithography.

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CZ's new Vertex 3.20 SSD is built with 20 nm NAND memory and beyond that is much the same as its older brother. The unit uses the Sandforce SF-2200 controller which provides read speeds of up to 550 MB/s and write speeds of up to 520 MB/s. Random read and write performance are 35,000 IOPS and 65,000 IOPS respectively.

Daryl Lang, Senior VP of Product Management for OCZ stated that "OCZ is always looking for ways to deliver superior solid state drive storage performance and features, as well as making this technology more accessible to the complete range of customers. The Vertex 3 has been a popular SSD series among consumers and implementing the newer, smaller profess geometry will not only extend its life, but enables mainstream users with an excellent computing experience at a competitive price point."

The Vertex 3.20 will be available with a capacity of 120 GB and 240 GB with a 480 GB variant arriving in the near future. At the time of writing, there has been no word on pricing and availability.

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Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

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11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • feeblepenguin
    smallest manmade architecture being mass produced... Up top OCZ
    Reply
  • Uberragen21
    feeblepenguinsmallest manmade architecture being mass produced... Up top OCZNot entirely true. Intel beat them to it by roughly 3 months. The has been available since Q4 '12. BUT, the OCZ sounds superior in both IOPS and R/W speed. Hopefully it's cheaper than the Intel 335 series.
    Reply
  • Uberragen21
    stupid broken link...
    Reply
  • Uberragen21
    jesus, *&%!ing broken links. Awesome job Toms breaking your forums!
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    Uberragen21jesus, *&%!ing broken links. Awesome job Toms breaking your forums!
    What broken links are you talking about?
    Reply
  • Soda-88
    Hopefully it's going to be cheaper than original Vertex 3.
    Reply
  • abbadon_34
    While the Vertex 3 MAX IOPS was always a great performer, the Vertex 4, and then Vector has since come out, with the Vector trading blows for top spot. Why go back 2 generations, and why continue the Sandforce after all the investment in Barefoot? I can only assume these are cheap or maybe made to be always on sale. Even it's the exact same drive, why not rename it for marketing purposes?
    Reply
  • leandrodafontoura
    I hate that they are always anouncing SSDs and never releasing them. Where is the promised $600 1TB from Crucial?
    Reply
  • blazorthon
    abbadon_34While the Vertex 3 MAX IOPS was always a great performer, the Vertex 4, and then Vector has since come out, with the Vector trading blows for top spot. Why go back 2 generations, and why continue the Sandforce after all the investment in Barefoot? I can only assume these are cheap or maybe made to be always on sale. Even it's the exact same drive, why not rename it for marketing purposes?
    OCZ wants to keep going with some third party controllers for their more affordable SSDs. They claimed in a release earlier that it was because they can't afford to be making all of their products on their own. When you think about it, with SandForce compression, the somewhat decreased NAND performance of the new flash is most mitigated by SandForce controllers whereas in controllers that don't use compression, real-world performance would take a greater hit in compressible workloads. OCZ has also already positioned their Vertex 3 drives as the replacement for their Agility SSDs for various reasons, some of which are undoubtedly related to this (Agility 4 demonstrated that using slow flash on a controller without compression is asking for trouble).

    SandForce, now owned by LSI, is also probably the biggest competitor in SSDs (Samsung is big, but they're not as *everywhere* as SandForce is AFAIK). Better to make it so that OCZ is not purely a competitor, but also a customer. It can be helpful to be a customer of your competitor. For example, OCZ has a better understanding of their competitor's technology while also being able to quickly switch around to having their best SSDs use it if it ever exceeds their own controller technology.

    Anyone who's read much from me on the topic may have noticed that I really don't like SandForce, but I can't deny the practicality of this decision. I do agree that renaming the series with the new NAND flash memory would make sense. Keeping the same name with a new product potentially adds confusion and I don't see that being any good.
    Reply
  • Uberragen21
    blazorthonWhat broken links are you talking about?I placed a link in my original post and each subsequent post, but Tom's simply removed the link and the words.

    "The has been available since Q4 '12." should have read "The has been available since Q4 '12." with the bracketed part with a hyperlink to the Intel website. But Tom's linking is broken apparently.
    Reply