The SSD world waited with bated breath on Tuesday as Intel announced the specs and pricing of its next-generation X25-M drives. The performance improved, sometimes heartily, but the pricing was the real story. Once these things get out there, Intel is expecting the 80GB drive to sell for $225 and the 160GB drive to sell for $440. If you'll remember back to last September, the X25-M first debuted at $595.

This meant trouble for 3rd party SSD makers like OCZ, whose cheapest high performance drives would now be more expensive than Intel's X25-M. As you'd expect, by forcing prices down, all 3rd party SSD vendors had to react. OCZ shared its new pricing structure with us that should start taking effect in the coming weeks:

Intel's new drives should settle down at around $2.80 per GB; with the new pricing structure OCZ's Indilinx MLC drives will average $2.43 per GB. The 32GB drives are now gone and the 128GB drives offer the best value. The Agility seems particularly budget friendly as it offers most of the performance of the Vertex but at a 10% lower cost per GB.

OCZ's 3.5" Colossus SSD is also going to boast very competitive pricing:

This is not just a Vertex in a 3.5" chassis, but rather multiple Vertex drives running in parallel but appearing as one large drive. OCZ is aiming square at the high end desktop user for this thing and it's priced well. The Colossus 120 provides a nice price point between Intel's 80GB and 160GB drives. The 1TB drive is pure insanity.

It's good to see OCZ responding so quickly to the price changes. I'd expect Corsair, G.Skill, Patriot and SuperTalent to all follow suit. The question now isn't how much, but rather when this will happen. I've been told a few weeks.

Update - OCZ contacted us with additional information on when the price cuts will take effect. First off, it will probably take a couple of weeks for prices to hit the suggested MSRP targets on certain product lines like the Agility due to current stock levels. However, depending on the seller, you could see prices near or at the listed MSRP shortly depending on promotion and rebate packages.

We did a quick price check at Newegg this afternoon and the 64GB Agility drive is selling for $177 and the 64GB Vertex is at $199 after a $30MIR. The 128GB Agility is still at $299 with the Vertex coming in at $339 after a $30MIR. The 256GB Vertex is still listed at $725 compared to a projected $599.99 MSRP target.