Not wanting to be completely married to Intel NAND production, OCZ wanted to introduce a version of the Vertex 3 that used 32nm Toshiba Toggle NAND - similar to what was used in the beta Vertex 3 Pro we previewed a few months ago. Rather than call the new drive a Vertex 3 with a slightly different model number, OCZ opted for a more pronounced suffix: MAX IOPS. By using 32nm NAND OCZ gets more die per channel and thus can get better performance through interleaving.

Not wanting to be outdone, Patriot's first SF-2281 SSD uses the same 32nm Toshiba NAND as the Vertex 3 MAX IOPS. These two drives are the new face for high performance SandForce SSDs. Read on for our full review!

A year ago whenever I'd request an SSD for review I'd usually get a 128GB drive built using 3x nm 4GB 2-bit MLC NAND die. These days the standard review capacity is twice that as most drives ship with 25nm NAND, using 8GB die. Seeing a bunch of scores for 240GB+ drives however is frustrating to all involved. At these capacities you're almost always looking at two die per NAND device, which has significant performance benefits due to interleaving. Most SSD controllers have eight NAND channels and with sixteen NAND deviecs with two die per device that's four NAND die that the controller can interleave access between for each channel. The 128GB drives by comparison halve the number of NAND, which only allows the controller to interleave requests among two die.

How read interleaving works on a single channel

Not only are these 240GB+ drives the best case performance you'd see from a particular SSD, they are also very expensive. At around $2/GB you're looking at over $500 for a high end 240GB+ SSD. I've spent the past few weeks gathering modern SSDs with 128GB of NAND on-board to provide a look at a more balanced point in the price/capacity spectrum.

Read on for our roundup of 120GB drives.

Three months ago we previewed the first client focused SF-2200 SSD: OCZ's Vertex 3. The 240GB sample OCZ sent for the preview was four firmware revisions older than what ended up shipping to retail last month, but we hoped that the preview numbers were indicative of final performance.

The first drives off the line when OCZ went to production were 120GB capacity models. These drives have 128GiB of NAND on board and 111GiB of user accessible space, the remaining 12.7% is used for redundancy in the event of NAND failure and spare area for bad block allocation and block recycling.

Unfortunately the 120GB models didn't perform as well as the 240GB sample we previewed. Was it the newer firmware or the simple fact that the 120GB had fewer NAND die under the hood. With 16 NAND devices on the 120GB model and only 8 channels branching off the SF-2200 controller, why would the 240GB drive be faster? Read on to find out.

SandForce was first to announce and preview its 2011 SSD controller technology. We first talked about the controller late last year, got a sneak peak at its performance this year at CES and then just a couple of months ago brought you a performance preview based on pre-production hardware and firmware from OCZ. Although the Vertex 3 shipment target was originally scheduled for March, thanks to a lot of testing and four new firmware revisions since I previewed the drive, the officially release got pushed back to April.

What I have in my hands is retail 120GB Vertex 3 with what OCZ is calling its final, production worthy client firmware. The Vertex 3 Pro has been pushed back a bit as the controller/firmware still have to make it through more testing and validation.

Read on for our full review!

Last week OCZ pulled the trigger and introduced the world’s first SF-2000 based SSD: the Vertex 3 Pro. Not only was it the world’s first drive to use SandForce’s 2nd generation SSD controller, the Vertex 3 Pro was also the first SATA drive we’ve tested to be able to break 500MB/s on both reads and writes. Granted that’s with highly compressible data but the figures are impressive nonetheless. What wasn’t impressive however was the price. The Vertex 3 Pro is an enterprise class drive, complete with features that aren’t exactly in high demand on a desktop. As a result the V3P commands a premium - the drive starts at $525 for a 100GB capacity.

Just as we saw last round however, if there’s a Vertex 3 Pro, there’s bound to be a more reasonably priced non-Pro version without some of the enterprisey features. Indeed there is. Contained within this nondescript housing is the first beta of OCZ’s Vertex 3 based on a SandForce SF-2200 series controller. The price point? Less than half of that of the V3P:

At an estimated $250 for a 120GB drive the Vertex 3 is more expensive than today’s Vertex 2, but not by too much nor do I expect that price premium to last for long. The Vertex 2 is on its way out and will ultimately be replaced by the V3. And SSD prices will continue to fall.

Read on for our full preview of the Vertex 3.