Intel Intros 510 Series SSDs, Cranked to SATA 6

We're not quite at the third generation of Intel SSDs yet, but there's been a considerable performance upgrade in the latest offering from the chipmaker in the new 510 series that offers SATA 6.0 Gbps performance.

Supporting data transfers of up to 500 megabytes per second (MB/s), the Intel SSD 510 doubles the sequential read speeds, and at up to 315MB/s more than triples the sequential write speeds of Intel's current 3Gbps SSDs.

"The Intel SSD 510 Series helps round out our SSD product line and was specifically designed for applications that require high sequential media transfers," said Pete Hazen, director of marketing for Intel's NAND Solutions Group. "Whether it's a gamer wanting impeccable visual performance and faster game loading, or a performance-intensive workstation user, the new 6 Gbps SATA SSD from Intel is not only significantly faster than the top 10,000 RPM gaming HDD, it's also faster than two RAIDed gaming HDDs."

Rather than moving to the 25nm NAND technology that's slated for the upcoming G3 Intel SSDs, the 510 Series uses proven the current 34nm NAND flash memory. The product is available now and comes in a 250GB capacity priced at $584 and a 120GB at $284, for 1,000-unit quantities.