WD has announced the addition of 3 gbps SATA transfer to the long standing Caviar line on the venerable 80GB platters. They have announced the WDxxxxJS SKUs which will pack 7200RPM spindles, 8MB buffers, and SATA 3gbps transfer into drives of 120, 160, 200, and 250GB capacity. Check out the data here.
This looks like a marketing gimmick. No mention of NCQ or any other SATA-II features, although the new 300MB/sec transfer rate will doubtlessly be featured rather prominently on marketing literature and retail boxes. They may not have even gotten rid of the PATA bridge chip on these units - they don't make any statements to the contrary. WD's drives would be much more compelling it they would accept the SATA standards and move to a cheaper in the long run native SATA logic.
This looks like a marketing gimmick. No mention of NCQ or any other SATA-II features, although the new 300MB/sec transfer rate will doubtlessly be featured rather prominently on marketing literature and retail boxes. They may not have even gotten rid of the PATA bridge chip on these units - they don't make any statements to the contrary. WD's drives would be much more compelling it they would accept the SATA standards and move to a cheaper in the long run native SATA logic.