Posted 10/06/09 at 11:30:25 AM by Paul Lilly

OCZ on Monday announced its latest Z-Drive PCI-Express SSD, the m84. Unlike previous Z-Drives, the m84 doesn't target enterprise users and instead is intended for the 'mainstream' power user crowd.

"The OCZ m84 Z-Drive is the newest addition to our line of PCI-E solid state drives and is designed to offer consumers a high performance yet aggressively priced solid state solution," said Eugene Chang, Vice President of Product Management at the OCZ Technology Group. "While the previously released p84 and e84 Z-Drives were intended specifically for enterprise applications, the m84 delivers much of the same performance but at a price point that is competitive with standard SSD drives. This is the first time that such a high performance PCI-E based SSD that is optimized for media editing, gaming, and workstation productivity, has been so within the reach of power users."

The m84 comes built with multi-level cell (MLC) NAND and a bootable internal RAID 0 configuration. OCZ says users can expect read speeds up to 750MB/s and write speeds up to 650MB/s, at least in the 256GB model. Other capacities include 512GB and 1TB, with both of the higher capacity models improving read and write speeds to 870MB/s and 780MB/s, respectively. All three boast sustained write speeds in the neighborhood of 600MB/s.

No word yet on price or availability.

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Posted 09/25/09 at 02:30:00 PM by Paul Lilly

OCZ on Thursday expanded its DDR3 lineup to include its new Black Edition 4GB kits intended for AMD's next-gen Phenom II processors, the memory maker said.

"OCZ is excited to launch our new AMD Black Edition Ready Series which is designed specifically to work with AMD's OverDrive software utility," said Eugene Chang, vice president of Product Management at OCZ. "The new OCZ Black Edition modules not only interact with AOD to overclock the memory, but also communicate with the BIOS to increase the frequency and performance of the memory controller. The result is a symbiotic relationship between memory and the rest of the system to unleash the full power of the Dragon Platform."

Two new kits make up the new series, both spec'd at 1600MHz and boasting a low 1.65 voltage. The only difference between the two comes down to timings, with the looser kit rated at 8-8-8-24 and the tighter timed kit sporting 7-7-7-24 latencies.

No word yet on price or availability.

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Posted 09/18/09 at 12:45:00 PM by Paul Lilly

While Super Talent is busy readying its RAIDDrive, OCZ today announced it has begun shipping its PCI-Express based Z-Drive. This is the same drive that was being discussed at CeBIT earlier this year, and like Super Talent's version, OCZ's model looks to leave behind the confines of the SATA bus for wider pastures on the PCI-E interface more suitable for the ultra fast flash memory.

"Traditional enterprise storage technology typically requires overly complex infrastructures as well as costly maintenance, and is often unable to deliver the level of performance required by OEM applications," said Ryan Peterson, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "The new OCZ Z-Drive is an all-in-one high performance plug-and-play bootable PCI-E solid state drive that addresses these challenges head on, and meets the demands of the complete range of enterprise storage and data access requirements."

Sporting an internal RAID 0 configuration, OCZ says its SLC-based Z-Drive can top out at 800MB/s reads and 750MB/s writes, whereas the MLC-based version trails just lightly behind at 750MB/s reads and 650MB/s writes. Both versions also look to consume less power than traditional hard drives.

While OCZ did say the drives have started shipping, it did not announce a price or expected availabilty date.

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Posted 08/25/09 at 10:19:44 AM by Paul Lilly

OCZ on Monday announced several new low-voltage DDR3 kits the company claims has been designed specifically for the upcoming Intel P55 chipset. All six dual-channel kits come rated at 1.65V, partially a result of "using sophisticated IC screening methods."

The new kits include:

• DDR3-1866, Platinum, 2x2GB, 9-9-9-27
• DDR3-1866, Gold, 2x2GB, 10-10-10-27
• DDR3-1600, Platinum, 2x2GB, 7-7-7-24
• DDR3-1600, Gold, 2x2GB, 8-8-8-24
• DDR3-1333, Platinum, 2x2GB, 7-7-7-20
• DDR3-1333, Gold, 2x2GB, 9-9-9-20

All six kits come with OCZ's familiar honeycomb heatspreader. OCZ also claims that each module is "100 percent hand tested."

No word yet on price or availability.

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Posted 08/20/09 at 05:30:08 PM by Paul Lilly

Last week, Corsair announced its new 128GB Voyager flash drive, a super-capacious thumb drive with a super-high price tag ($400). At the exact opposite end of the spectrum, OCZ today announced a new line of USB flash drives, dubbed Zee, aimed at users on a tight budget.

"Designed for the consumer on the go, the compact Zee is an economical USB drive that makes it easy to transfer images, multimedia, and essential data between multiple computers," commented Alex Mei, CMO of OCZ. "The Zee is designed to be affordable to the complete range of consumers, and is available in large capacities up to 16GB yet is both lightweight and compact so that it is highly portable."

In addition to 16GB, the Zee is also offered in 2GB, 4GB, and 8GB capacities. Other details remain sparse, including rated transfer speeds, price, or availability.

Press Release
Product Page

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Posted 08/10/09 at 09:16:54 AM by Paul Lilly

We've longed bemoaned the real-world write performance of most SSDs, which often falls short of the much speedier read speeds. Even worse, surmises HotHardware, is the potential for an SSD's write performance to degrade over time.

"The flash memory used on today's SSDs is comprised of cells that usually contain 4KB pages that are arranged in blocks of 512KB," writes HotHardware. "When a cell is unused, data can be written to it relatively quickly. But if a cell already contains some data -- no matter how little, even if it fills only a single page in the block -- the entire block must be re-written. That means, whatever data is already present in the block must be read, then it must be combined or replaced, etc., with the new additional data, and the entire block is then re-written."

The good news is most manufacturers are attacking the problem head on via firmware. One such example is OCZ's implementation of the Indilinx firmware, which the company plans to include on all Vertex series drives. When the drives are idle, Indilinx and other similar SSD firmware sweep through an SSD's cells looking for and removing so-called "garbage data."

HotHardware got its hands on one of OCZ's new Vertex drives outfitted with the Indilinx firmware and the results are pretty surprising. After "dirtying" the drive with chunks of data, performance degradation became apparent while running the ATTO Disk Benchmark. But after letting the drive sit idle for 5 minutes, performance numbers were nearly restored to new condition.

See for yourself right here.

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Posted 07/31/09 at 10:07:29 AM by Paul Lilly

Adding to its growing power supply line, OCZ this week announced the immediate availability of its new Z-Series Gold power supply line. Each new model boasts 80+ Gold certification, which means they must remain at least 90 percent efficient at 50 percent load, and never drop below 87 percent efficiency at any load level.

The new models are available in 850W and 1000W in either modular or non-modular form. Taking a page from PC Power & Cooling, which was acquired by OCZ in 2007, the Z-Series sports a single, beefy +12V rail (83A on the 1000W and 71A on the 850W) rather than spreading the amperage through multiple +12V rails.

All the other standard essentials are accounted for, including active PFC, a large cooling fan (135mm),  oodles of SATA connectors, and SLI certification.

The Z-Series is available now for $300 (Z1000M), $290 (Z1000), $240 (Z850M), and $220 (Z850).

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Posted 07/24/09 at 10:00:45 AM by Paul Lilly

Much to the delight of power users who avoided the temptation of spending too much for too little capacity in Intel's first-generation X25-M solid state drives, the chip maker earlier this week announced a second generation of SSDs with a die shrink (34nm down from 50nm) and reduced pricing. Even better, Intel's latest pricing has at least one competitor reevaluating its own price points.

That competitor is OCZ, who said it plans to reduce prices on its Vertex, Agility, and Colossus SSD lines. Pricing for Intel's 80GB and 160GB X25-M (34nm) check in at $2.81 and $2.75 per GB respectively, while all but one of OCZ's nine drives receiving a price cut will undercut Intel by at least a few cents per GB, with the 128GB Agility expected to cost $2.11 per GB.

While OCZ is so far the only manufacturer to announce price drops, don't be surprised to see other third-party SSD makers forced to do the same as a result of Intel's comparatively aggressively pricing strategy.

Look for OCZ's price cuts to go into effect in the coming weeks.

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