Here’s a name you hear pretty often in the realm of SSDs. OCZ recently introduced the 4th generation of their venerable line of Vertex SSDs and this time the new drive will be powered by OCZ’s new in house Indilinx Everest 2 controller. Remember how we took a sneak peak at some benchmarks previously? Well, it looks like the drive is now finalized and should be available at your favorite retailer for purchase!

How does it do? Well, from early reviews, it looks like the new Vertex 4 does quite well, with most reviewers citing that the drive is able to deliver high sequential read/write performance with both compressible and incompressible data. Additionally, from a reliability standpoint, OCZ is matching the likes of Intel with a full 5 year warranty on their drives. Can’t wait to get my hands on one of these!

Reviews: The SSD Review, AnandTech, Tom’s Hardware

Available at: Newegg

Press Release

Fourth Generation SSD Delivers a New Class of Performance and Endurance that is backed by a 5-Year Warranty

SAN JOSE, CA – April 4, 2012 – OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs) for computing devices and systems, today introduced the Vertex 4 SATA III SSD series featuring the company’s advanced Indilinx Everest 2 controller platform. The Vertex 4 delivers the industry’s highest input/output operations per second (IOPS) performance for SATA-based drives across a wide variety of application workloads making this fourth generation flagship product line ideally suited for demanding computing and workstation environments. It consistently accomplishes superior real world performance over the long term regardless of whether the data streams are in compressed or uncompressed formats.

The Vertex 4 features sequential bandwidth up to 535 MB/s, maximum random performance up to 120,000 IOPS, and with hard to manage incompressible data, delivers 95,000 4K random read IOPS and 85,000 random write IOPS. In comparison to OCZ’s previous generation Vertex 3 SSD, rated at 60,000 sustained 4K random write IOPS, the Vertex 4 doubles typical transactional performance. The Vertex 4 also generates best in class latency as low as 0.04ms for read operations and 0.02ms for write operations, delivering an improvement of approximately 80 percent over the Vertex 3. In typical use case scenarios, the Vertex 4 outperforms the Vertex 3 by as much as 400 percent.

Powered by its new Indilinx Everest 2 controller platform, featuring a dual core architecture and 400MHz clock speeds, the Vertex 4 eliminates the need for internal data compression, further enhancing drive reliability. This advanced controller architecture also includes key features such as an advanced error correction code (ECC) engine, dynamic wear-leveling, auto encryption, and Indilinx’s next generation Ndurance™ 2.0 NAND flash management technology, enabling OCZ to support the Vertex 4 SSD line with a 5-year warranty.

Ndurance 2.0, embedded within the Everest 2 platform, overcomes NAND flash memory shortcomings to extend NAND flash life well beyond the manufacturer rated program and erase cycle specifications. It ensures that the Vertex 4 can be reliably used in a wide range of computing environments over an extended lifetime. This advanced NAND flash management suite not only radically extends NAND flash memory life, but provides enterprise-class endurance even when commodity-grade NAND flash is used.

“The Vertex 4 represents an evolution in SSD technology and is a milestone product, delivering maximum performance and the highest NAND flash durability to date while eliminating the tradeoffs typically associated with on-the-fly data compression in MLC-based SSDs,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. “We have raised the bar with an SSD product that delivers the ultimate in performance, regardless of data type, and for the first time ever, provides high read and write IOPS performance all on the same SSD platform.”

The Vertex 4 SSD will be available through OCZ’s global channel in 128GB to 512GB capacities.

For more information on the Vertex 4 SSD, please visit our product page here