Vertex 3 SATA 6.0 Gbps SSDs from OCZ Now On Sale

It took a whole, but it looks like a certain collection of very fast solid state drives have finally been made available for order, although they aren't exactly what one might call accessible in terms of pricing.

Solid state drives are already known far and wide for their very high data speeds, at least when compared to hard disk drives (HDDs).

Not only is the NAND Flash memory technology itself quick at reading and writing, but the SSD controller chips developed by IT players have been in a sort of competition of their own.

SandForce is one of, if not the best known supplier of controller chips around the world.

Its SF series of chips has always been recognized as top-tier, something that was only perpetuated by the most recent batch of SATA 6.0 Gbps-ready models.

Dubbed SF-2000, one of them was used by OCZ in the development of the Vertex 3 SSD series.

They were unveiled as far back as February and are now shipping

For those that want specifics, there are, at present, three models in the line, each with its own storage space and write speeds (capacity of SSDs has some effect on the maximum performance).

The 120 GB one, for instance, writes at 500 MB/s, while the 240 GB and 480 GB ones operate at 520 MB/s and 450 MB/s, respectively.

The rest of their specs are identical, leaving them with a 2.5-inch form factor, a MTBF of 2 million hours, support fro TRIM and a 4k random write performance of up to 60,000 IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second).

All in all, they should be twice as good as the Vertex 2 and are priced at $300 (120 GB), $550 (240 GB) and $1,900 (480 GB). They are all built out of MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory chips.