Intel officially announced today the Intel Solid-State Drive 330 Series, a SATA 6 gigabit-per-second (Gb/s) solid-state drive (SSD) based on Sandforce SF-2281 controllers and designed as a more affordable entry into the accelerated storage performance of SSDs.

The Intel SSD 330 Series is offered in 60 gigabytes (GB), 120GB and 180GB versions. It contains Intel 25-nanometer (nm) multi-level cell (MLC) NAND memory. Its SATA 6Gb/s interface doubles the bandwidth of its current SATA 3Gb/s Intel SSD 320 Series, providing up to 500 megabytes-per-second (MB/s) sequential read speeds and up to 450MB/s sequential write speeds. Random read performance can go up to 22,500 Input-Output Operations Per Second (IOPS) and 33,000 write IOPS.

The Intel SSD 330 Series comes in a standard 2.5-inch/9.5mm form factor as a replacement to an HDD. It can be used in a dual-drive desktop PC configuration to speed up boot times and applications speeds, or as a single-drive notebook upgrade.

Available beginning today worldwide at a suggested channel price of $89 for a 60GB drive, $149 for a 120GB drive and $234 for a 180GB drive. It is also backed by a 3-year limited warranty.

Intel is currently offering a range of SSD choices within four product families. The Intel SSD 300 Family is aimed at entry-level, mainstream client users. The Intel SSD 500 Family offers more fully featured, higher-performing client SSDs for computer and gaming enthusiasts. The Intel SSD 700 and Intel SSD 900 Families are targeted for data center applications.

Intel SSD 330
Capacity	60GB	120GB	180GB
Controller	SandForce SF-2281	SandForce SF-2281	SandForce SF-2281
Interface	6Gbps SATA	6Gbps SATA	6Gbps SATA
Random Read Performance (Up to)	12K IOPS	22.5K IOPS	42K IOPS
Random Write Performance (Up to)	20.5K IOPS	33K IOPS	52K IOPS
Sequential Read Performance (Up to)	500 MB/s	500 MB/s	500 MB/s
Sequential Write Performance (Up to)	400 MB/s	450 MB/s	450 MB/s
Warranty	3 years	3 years	3 years
MSRP	$89	$149	$234