Suggestions needed w/ CD-RW burn speed

Any suggestions welcome. Here's my situation.

I have a new TDK 12/10/32 with the "burn proof" feature. All current firmware updates from factory. It does work.(no errors) but 4X speed is as fast as i can burn w/o the buffer bar barely visible to falling out of view...which causes the burn speed to slow and stop to catch up. I think it may even be slower than just running at 4X's.
My Hard Drive (C) is on Primary IDE channel-1
My Writer is on the Secondary IDE channel-2
Ctrl/alt/del.=.systray, explorer, and TDK Digital MixMaster.(I think a form of NERO 5)
One hard drive...Ram 192mb...Device mgr./DMA is checked.
I do a fresh boot, defrag etc.
Converting MP3's to .wav runs about the same speed as burning to CD. Aprx.4x's.
Anything I'm missing? What could be keeping me from burning at 8 or 12X as indicated by TDK. Thanks alot...

I have heard of problems along that line with Via chipsets running the Via busmaster drivers. If you have a Via chipset I believe the best solution is to remove the Via busmaster drivers and use the Windows drivers.

Have you tried it with the DMA off? Most newer burners recommend it be on but some systems don’t seem to know that.