Earlier this year, with the introduction of the Vertex series of solid-state drives (SSDs), OCZ sought to refine its SSD product lineup by introducing a performance drive. During the course of evaluating the new SSD, several reviewers and consumers found it to suffer 'drive-stuttering', lagging and momentary lock-ups. The problem was zeroed-in on the JMicron JMF602-series drive controller.

In the wake of several complaints and bad press, OCZ sought to issue a product change, by replacing the JMF602-series controller with a new Korean Indilink Barefoot 90 nm controller. The new controller will be able to enable speeds of up to 230/170 MB/s (read/write), when used in single-level cell SSDs, and up to 200/160 MB/s with multi-level cell SSDs. The controller is a favourite among SSD manufacturers,owing to its broad NAND-flash chip compatibility range, that includes chips from Intel, Micron, Samsung, Hynix and Toshiba. The new Vertex-series lineup will be available comprising of 30GB, 60GB, 120GB and 250GB capacities starting this week, with retail-prices of $129, $249, $469 and $869 respectively. The 30GB and 60GB variants will have caches of 32MB, while the 120GB and 250GB ones will carry 64MB caches.