Intel has announced the its Solid-State Drive (SSD) 510 series. The new Intel SSD 510 features SATA 6Gbps performance to take full advantage of Intel's transition to higher speed SATA bus interfaces on the recently introduced 2nd generation Intel Core processors (also know as the Sandy Bridge platform).

The SSD 510 series uses 34nm NAND flash memory and supports data transfers of up to 500MB/s, doubling sequential read speeds, and more than tripling the sequential write speeds (up to 315MB/s) of Intel's current 3Gbps SSDs. Intel is thus touting that the series offers the fastest sequential read and write speeds of any consumer SATA SSD available today, beating a traditional HDD by more than 50 percent.

The series is available now (launching a day early) in 120GB ($284) and 250GB ($584) flavors. Prices are for 1,000-unit quantities. Both products include a limited 3-year warranty.

Intel SSDs are available at Best Buy or Fry's Electronics in the US or online from Internet outlets such as Amazon.com or Newegg.com. To copy and clone data from a user's old HDD to a new Intel SSD, the chip giant offers a free cloning utility: Intel Data Migration Software. You'll also get the Intel SSD Toolbox with Intel SSD Optimizer, a free utility which provides Windows users with a powerful set of management, information, and diagnostic tools to help maintain the SSD.

"The Intel SSD 510 Series helps round out our SSD product line and was specifically designed for applications that require high sequential media transfers," Pete Hazen, director of marketing for Intel's NAND Solutions Group, said in a statement. "Whether it's a gamer wanting impeccable visual performance and faster game loading, or a performance-intensive workstation user, the new 6Gbps 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."