OCZ Debuts Vertex 3 SSDs with SF-2000 Series
Thursday OCZ Technology said that its new line of Vertex 3 SSDs have shipped for the consumer sector, arriving in 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB capacities. The company's enterprise-class Vertex 3 Pro series won't launch until mid-Q2 2011-- otherwise sometime around next month.
We first saw the Vertex 3 series back in January during CES 2011. Taking advantage of the SandForce SF-2200 controller and a SATA 6 Gbps interface, the new line is capable of read speeds up to 550 MB/s and write speeds up to 520 MB/s, depending on the capacity. All three provide the same 60,000 IOPS (4K random write), native TRIM support and 2.5-inch form factor traits.
"The Vertex 3 series with the SandForce SF-2200 SSD processor has been eagerly anticipated in the marketplace," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology Group. "Our partnership with SandForce has again facilitated the introduction of a solution that sets the benchmark for industry leading performance and reliability."
According to OCZ, the SSDs offer RAID support, a MTBF of 2 million hours, and low power consumption of 2W while in operation and .5W while in standby. Other features include a seek time of .1 ms and an included adapter bracket for mounting the MLC NAND-based drive into a 3.5-inch drive bay.
Currently Newegg is listing the 120 GB model for $300, the 240 GB model for $550 and the 480 GB model for a hefty $1,900 USD. Additional online retailers include Amazon, Micro Center, Circuit City and others.
Yeah it's pretty incredible, but it's not really that surprising if you understand the general basics of how flash and NAND memory operates. It's simply evolutionary rather than revolutionary and the speed barriers will probably always be down to the bus and connections for the foreseeable future and not the drive or controller itself. Now that we have fully saturated SATA 3.0 aka Sata 6Gbps, can we now please work on correcting some critical flaws and consistent issues with future SSD's so we can get some quality assurance going and have it market saturated so I don't have to hold a Christmas list of what to look for when I go shopping for one?
Since size isn't going anywhere without a heavy price on the wallet, this is the next logical step if you want mass adoption by consumers. SSD's have only gone from a baby lying on its back to laying flat on its belly. There is a long way to go before it even comes close to running in the mainstream
speeds that won't be needed by 80% of consumers?
seriously, now that sata III is nearly saturated, maybe instead of working on increasing the speeds which will no longer be beneficial, they can work on bringing the price down per gig.... *fingers crossed*
Which should probably suggest to the developers to focus on capacity and price instead. Fast is great and all, but affordability and utility reign supreme in the real world. This is how new, great technology dies out before it catches on.
If they can get a fast 500gb SSD that only costs $200, they'd sell more. $1900 isn't going to happen for 99% of the population.
So much so i gave up waiting and bought a vertex 2.. only to see the place i bought it from advertise the vertex 3 4 days later
Trying to sell the vertex 2 now haha
making it so that cheaper poorer quality nand can be used. Do you really
want to be using an SSD with the crapest nand to store your data...
Its really only the nand manufacturers who can bring the prices down and
then thats down to process size. The next process size down will hopefully
bring the price down to $1 a GB.
So the only thing the controller suppliers can do is improve performance, I
personally would rather they try to improve general small file performance
rather than headline sequential speeds.
$120 is absolutely the max I can afford for an SSD.