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...