OCZ Unleashes Vertex Turbo Edition

OCZ Unleashes Vertex Turbo Edition
 
The new Vertex Turbo Edition comes with an overclocked Flash controllerOCZ yesterday added another potential winner to its highly successful Vertex series of SSDs. The new Vertex Turbo Edition series comes with an overclocked Flash controller to boost the drives’ read / write speeds.
 
The Vertex series SSDs have put OCZ in a leadership position owing to their combination of high quality, excellent performance and great pricing. The Barefoot Flash controller from Indilinx has allowed OCZ to not only create SSDs with excellent write speeds, but also keep the pricing at highly competitive levels.
 
Following the recent introduction of two new SSDs – the Vertex for Mac and the Vertex EX for the enterprise market – OCZ yesterday came out with the Vertex Turbo Edition. The Turbo series SSDs feature a Barefoot NAND Flash controller with 64MB of SDRAM cache that has been overclocked to 180MHz instead of the 166MHz featured in the regular Vertex series SSDs. The increase in core clock speeds allows the Vertex Turbo Edition SSDs to achieve higher performance.
 
Available in 30GB, 60GB, 120GB, and 250GB models, the top model among the SSDs boasts of a maximum read speed of 270MB/s and a write speed of 210MB/s. Sustained write speeds however, are around the 120MB/s mark. The 120GB model comes with a maximum write speed of 210MB/s while the lower end models have speeds that are about 25% lower.
 
Announcing the new SSDs, Director of Product Management for OCZ, Ryan Edwards claimed, “The new Vertex Turbo makes use of the fastest SDR DRAM cache available and a proprietary FTL level firmware that provides an even faster solid state drive for enthusiasts looking for the ultimate desktop or laptop storage upgrade.”
 
Keeping the higher performance in view, OCZ has also upped the prices of the Vertex Turbo Edition SSDs by about 10% compared to their regular counterparts. The prices for the 30GB, 60GB, 120GB and 250GB models have been tagged at $139.99, $249.99, $409.99 and $774.99 respectively. OCZ has already started shipping the units to retailers, which are expected to hit stores next week.
 
Parallel to the new releases, OCZ also announced an extension of warranty on all its Vertex and Summit series SSDs to three years. This warranty also covers those customers who purchased Vertex and Summit drives earlier; they will have their warranty extended from two to three years.
 
“Extending the warranty makes the OCZ total solution even more robust for consumers, and OCZ believes that product quality should always come first,” Edwards stated, and added, “The confidence to back up that quality with a longer than industry average warranty is an added value for our complete spectrum of customers. Post sale service and support is simply part of the OCZ package, and now with any Vertex and Summit customers have an even longer period in which to leverage that added value.”
 
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