This morning, OCZ pushed out a new firmware, dubbed 1.4RC. This is a release candidate of the upcoming performance-boosting firmware, and is meant for "enthusiasts who like to tinker with their hardware".

New Performance Specs in Red:
Max Read / Write
128GB: 535MB/s – 550MB/s / 200MB/s – 420MB/s
256GB: 535MB/s – 550MB/s / 380MB/s – 465MB/s
512GB: 535MB/s – 550MB/s / 475MB/s

As a heads up for those who are feeling froggy this Monday morning and choose to update their Vertex 4 – this is a destructive update and will wipe the drive. The updater runs within a Windows session with the Vertex 4 connected as a secondary drive. While you’re ‘under the hood’, I’d also recommend performing a secure erase with the OCZ Toolbox software after you have udpated and power cycled the SSD.

I have been able to partially confirm the performance increases, and will be reporting full results later this evening (for all three capacity points). Stay tuned!

*Note* OCZ NDA’d this update for this morning, but we have not seen where they have posted it for download from their site. We will post a link in the comments below once it has become available.