I just realized something very odd. Whilst burning an image with CloneCD, I noticed the peak speed reached (according to CloneCD) 45.16x writing speed @ 79**kb/sec.
After the burning, I went to CloneCD again and pulled down the Writing Speed selection and behold, it shows the option to choose 48x writing.
Just a miscalculation by CloneCD or do I have some kind of gem here?