read time to slow on plextor 40/12/40a

[robmirror]

I have a pen.3 - 1 gig. 512 meg of ram. windows 98 se. 80 gig hd 7200 rpm.It seems no matter what i do it read my plextor 401240a reads cd-g at 2 or 4 x.MY plextor writes fast.
I also have 2 sony 140 e but would get weird artifacts in the graphix but it would extract really fast. should i get another burner to read my cd-g faster and use the pextor to write?If so where would a good place be to get one without having to sell my soul ... : )
thanks rOB