a friend of mine has two intel drives

they have been steadily getting worse and worse in performance.....he says they are degrading

we are talking mainly benching here. he knows his data and has redone setup from scratch every time for original to recheck figures

they are just getting worse and worse

that is not good from a few months old drives that see an occasional benchmark here and there

it could be that yours was crappy out of the box

i would get RMA if you've spent time to make sure you are doing everything right and definitely dont get the advertised performance