Burner burning 8.0X media at 4.0X

[IceBlade]

Yeah so I've had the burner for awhile but always used 4.0X DVD-R's. It's a NEC ND-3540A but I've just recently bought 8.0X DVD-R's. Problem is they only burn at 4.0X even though I set it to burn at 8.0X. I'm using Alcohol 120% but have also tried with the Nero 7 Ultimate and the Windows Vista default burning software. With Alcohol 120% it always says Illegal speed 8.0X for this medium, running on 4.0X.

Sometimes it goes up to 6.3X or so and I've seen it go up to 8.0X but more often than not it stays at 4.1X. I've spent hours reading forums and googling but haven't found a solution. I updated the firmware to v1.04 but that didn't seem to do anything either.

Has anyone heard of a similiar problem or could enlighten me on what it may be?