One more thing about the encryption. It was encrypted AES which is the only allowed encryption for system partition through TrueCrypt. Had TrueCrypt allowed to encryp the drive with cascades (Twofish, Serpent, AES), performance would further decrease.

I also would like to add for single SSD, Sequential Read (Non-RAID and No Encryption) only reached 176mb for this SSD which is consistent with the specs that NewEgg listed could reach 250mb.