We tested OCZ’s Vertex 3 6Gb/s SATA drive on our test bed’s 3Gb/s SATA controller, and found that it far surpassed the Vertex 2 that was our previous champion, offering sustained-read and -write speeds around 260MB/s and 220MB/s, respectively. Even constrained by the 3Gb/s SATA interface, the Vertex 3 matched or bested the Vertex 2 in nearly every benchmark.

The performance difference on 3Gb/s SATA isn’t so great that you should upgrade to a current-gen SSD if you’re already rocking a SandForce 1200, Intel, or Samsung drive and you don’t have 6Gb/s SATA ports available. But if you’re in the market for your first SSD and still rocking a last-gen motherboard, don’t rule out 6Gb/s SATA drives. If your current mobo can’t take advantage of all that speed, your next mobo can. Or you can grab a PCI-E-to-6Gb/s SATA host bus adapter, like HighPoint’s Rocket 600 series, to get 6Gb/s SATA on your current board.

So do yourself a favor and get yourself the next generation SSD drive, because you wil upgrade you motherboard soon enough! Trust me 275 MB/sex is nothing to scoff at. I should know, i am rocking an OCZ Vertex 2 and its amazing… I couldn’t image how fast a Vertex 3 is… well i guess logistically it would be double the speed, but my system is pretty much near instant boot and instant application load times.

-NS