Burning with Nero and Verbatim 2x dvd-r's

I tried my first burn at 2x using a Verbatim 2x dvd-r with Nero 5.5.8.0 (the good ver for burning dvds)and a Pioneer 104 burner but I don't know if its working right. The Recorder Buffer Level/State is fluxuating big time from 98% down to around 19%. I've never seen it get that low before. My computer isn't slow, I have an Athlon 1.2 and the harddrive from which I'm burning from is a brand new 60 gig, 7200 rpm drive. The disc is only at 74% and its already been 34 mins burning. I know it takes about 50 mins to burn at 1x so I don't know if this is working. The VIDEO_TS folder Im burning is about 4.35 gbs big. What do you think?

2 possibilities: The drive is in PIO mode, but your CPU doesn't make it. Would be strange, since my PIII/800 is able to do 2x burning in PIO mode. You can try enabling DMA then. Or: The drive is already in DMA mode. Then you probably experience a very common error, which is cause by a firmware bug. In this case, you must disable DMA. 1x burning of 4,35 GB takes about 58min. What is your CPU load at 1x burning?

@alexnoe Well, at 39 mins into it, I got a 'Burned process failed at 2x (2,760 KB/s)' and a coaster. Im using firmware 1.20 and I have to set it at PIO mode or I get burn fails at 1x. Is there any way to fix this? I would like to burn at 2x since I paid for 2x media. Thanks.

If DMA burning always fails (as it does for me), then there is no way to fix but to run it in PIO mode. What chipset do you use? I don't hope it's a KT133A...you might have a change of getting it work by adding an additional IDE card. But I can't promise anything, and some of these cards won't work for burning at all (even if they are ATA/PI cards) Your problem is definitely the transfer of the data to your burner, nothing else. It's really strange that a Athlon 1,2 can't do 2x PIO writing.

@alexnoe Now I just got a burn fail at 1x!! Damn, hopefully I can send these Verbatims back to the company. Im running a KT7a mobo but I dont know what chipset.

KT7A has a KT133A chipset :( The problem is that this is even bad among the VIAs...you can now try to reinstall windows 2000 (not 98/me!) and then do *not* install any via drivers. This could help.