Hi Joe. I got frustrated and exchanged the drive for a Kingston which I just installed and works the way it should. I'm going to post some images of a similar drive to hopefully help others. I didn't take any snapshots of the Intel 530 but I did get some snapshots of the PNY XLR8 Pro which acted exactly the same and the Speccy results were identical. Both use the SandForce 2281 controller. Below is the PNY Speccy image. Note the "Interface" is listed as SATA and the "Used Transfer Mode" is SATA II after running the ATTO benchmark utility. Before running the ATTO benchmark, the "Used Transfer Mode" was listed as SATA III. At some point during the test the interface changes from SATA III to SATA II. It did this every time.
Here's the Kingston Speccy image installed on the same laptop:
Note that the "Interface" says SATA-3 instead of just SATA. This drive performs at full SATA III levels throughout the entire ATTO test.
The driver version for the Intel Mobile Express Chipset SATA AHCI Controller is 12.8.10.1005 the latest one available.