OCZ Intros RevoDrive 3 and X2 PCI-E SSDs

Wednesday OCZ launched its new "workstation class" RevoDrive 3 and RevoDrive 3 X2 lineup of PCI Express-based SSDs. These "drives" offer users monster performance, designed with the company's proprietary Virtualized Controller Architecture (VCA) technology to deliver maximum throughput in multithreaded applications.

"OCZ RevoDrive 3 PCIe SSDs use our VCA 2.0 technology to deliver superior performance and functionality for everything from scientific computing to high availability clustering," said Daryl Lang, Vice President of Product Management of OCZ Technology. "This exciting new workstation-class storage product accelerates application performance and takes full advantage of today's multithreaded processors and software, providing customers with greater throughput in an easy-to-deploy, single card solution."

According to the specs, the RevoDrive 3 provides sequential read and write speeds of up to 1 GB/s and up to 925 MB/s respectively, and random write (4K) performance of up to 130,000 IOPS. The specs of the RevoDrive 3 X2 are a bit meatier, with sequential read and write speeds of up to 1.5 GB/s and up to 1.25 GB/s respectively, and random write (4K) performance of up to 230,000 IOPS. Both models arrive in 240 and 480 GB capacities, but the RevoDrive 3 X2 also sports an additional 960 GB model.

So far the drives aren't available on the OCZ website or listed on online vendors like Amazon and Newegg, but you can check out our preview of the RevoDrive 3 X2 by heading here until the products finally go live. "The RevoDrive 3 X2 continues OCZ's tradition of delivering innovative technology able to serve up blistering performance to enthusiasts," Andrew said in his hands-on article. "It's not a business-class product. It's for the power user who is able to tax it using the right workload. If you're not one of those folks, the RevoDrive 3 X2 is seriously overkill."

Pricing for the X2 version includes $699.99 for the 240 GB model, $1699.99 for the 480 GB model, and an insane (but justified) $3199.99 for the 960 GB model.

Kevin Parrish has over a decade of experience as a writer, editor, and product tester. His work focused on computer hardware, networking equipment, smartphones, tablets, gaming consoles, and other internet-connected devices. His work has appeared in Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, Maximum PC, Digital Trends, Android Authority, How-To Geek, Lifewire, and others.