Introduction

Yesterday we looked at the Corsair Performance 3, the first retail next generation Marvell - BKK2 controlled SSD to hit our lab. Today we have the Performance 3's, and for that matter every other new consumer SSD's main competitor in house; the OCZ Technology Vertex 3.

OCZ Technology leads all other manufacturers in SSD development. The company has put forth a vast amount of resources in this market and even all but abandoned their memory products that put OCZ on the map. The payoff has been a near two year domination of the SSD market with sales that dwarf all other manufacturers. OCZ is at this point the SSD manufacturer in which all others strive to be.

SandForce is announcing two new consumer class controllers. There's the SF-2200, a high end consumer controller with 16 data lanes (8 accessible at one time) in a 400-TFBGA package capable of reading data at 550MB/s and writing data at 525MB/s. The other one is the new mainstream SF-2100 which has up to 8 data lanes and uses a 256-TFBGA package. SandForce didn't give out a lot of information on the new 2100, but we've working on getting more information. We'll give you a full breakdown on the new controllers tomorrow since not all of the information relates to the Vertex 3.

Yes, today is all about the OCZ Technology Vertex 3. A few websites previewed the Vertex 3 PRO a few days ago, but the PRO model is an enterprise part that costs considerably more than the consumer drive we are looking at today. If you followed our coverage at CES then you already know the Vertex 3 is going to be one of the fastest SSDs released in 2011. The Vertex 3 has been discussed and drooled over in forums all over the world, even though the only real information on the drive has come from a couple of pictures from the OCZ suite at CES. At CES OCZ stated that the Vertex 3 was capable of 550MB/s read and over 500MB/s write speeds. Those speeds are high enough to get me drooling.

If you think the speeds are incredible, then just wait until you see the price. Go to the kitchen and grab a roll of paper towels and let's dig into the specifications then the projected cost of the OCZ Technology Vertex 3.