Intel releases 330 SSD range

Intel has started shipping the Intel SSD 330 solid-state drive, which has received a performance bump and a minor price reduction compared with its predecessor.

The series, released on Monday, is part of Intel's entry-level 300 drive family. The 2.5-inch drives come in 60GB, 120GB and 180GB capacities and connect via 6Gbps SATA.

"An SSD is still the single best upgrade you can make to your existing PC," James Slattery, an Intel product manager for client SSDs, said in a statement.

The 25nm multi-level cell drives double the bandwidth of their previous generation — the 320 series — from 3Gbps to 6Gbps. They can handle up to 500MBps of sequential reads and up to 450MBps of sequential writes. Random read performance tops out at 22,500 input-output operations per second (IOPS) and 33,000 write IOPS.

Random reads aside, this compares favourably with the previous generation, which was capable of 270MBps sequential reads, 220MBps sequential writes, 39,500 IOPS random reads and 23,000 IOPS random writes.

Prices are better than in the previous generation as well, with a 60GB drive costing $89 (£56), $149 for a 120GB, down from $209, and 180GB costing $234.

The drives were made available worldwide on Monday.