14 DAY TRIAL // Keenly awaited by many PC enthusiasts, the OCZ Vertex 3 solid state disk has slowly but surely started to make its way into retail as Newegg has just added the 120GB and 480GB versions of the SSD to its offer and the drive retails for $299.99.
OCZ's solid state disk spent most of the last week on Newegg's “out of stock” list, and is usually pretty hard to track down as stock is exhausted shortly after it gets listed.
The Vertex 3 is one of the first next-generation SSD drives to be released as the unit is based on SandForce's SF-2281 controller which is paired together with 25nm NAND Flash cells manufactured by IMFT (a joint venture of Intel and Micron).
The SF-2281 SSD processor also features native SATA 6Gbps support, and all the SandForce specific technologies that we are well accustomed with by now, such as DuraWrite and RAISE.
This setup allows the highest capacity drives in OCZ's lineup to reach read speeds of 550MB/sec while writes are rated at about 525MB/sec, an the first reviews of the SSDs tend to agree with these numbers.
Random 4K performance is also rated at a whopping 60,000 IOPS, in 4K random write scenarios, and 40,000 IOPS, when 4K random reads are performed.
As stated earlier, Newegg has priced the 120GB version of the Vertex 3 at $299.99, which makes it $50 more expensive than OCZ's recommended retail price.
The other two solid state disks in the Vertex 3 lineup also have their prices set above the MSRP, as the 240GB version is listed at $549.99 and the 480GB drive retails for $1,899.99.
In comparison, OCZ's recommended sale price for the SSDs is set at $499.99 and $1799.99, respectively. (via Tweak Town)