sql bulk delete is much slower?
Considering the symptomp of gradual degradation after each batch I would guess is caused by DELETE leaving behind ghosted records, see SQL Server “empty table” is slow after deleting all (12 million) records? Subsequent deletes have to skip over all those ghosts, until they are reclaimed. For a one time operation it would make more sense to copy the data to be kept into a new table, then use partition switch tricks to switch it in instead of the old data, then truncate the old data. If you can't do ALTER TABLE .. SWITCH you can use the old sp_rename trick, but bear in mind that sp_rename does not preserve security permissions etc on the table (it is a different table with the same name).

If this deletion is to be done regularly, then you may look into a sliding window scenario.