coolpix 5700 and speed of writing to cf card

Hi,

I have a coolpix 5700 that I'm reasonably happy with, but lately I've
been more and more annoyed at the time it takes to write the raw photo
to the compact flash card. I realize I'm writing almost 7 megs worth
of data, but it's taking what feels like a minute per shot (probably
closer to 30 seconds, I'll admit I haven't timed it). I can also only
take about 3 raw photos before I have to wait a few minutes for the
camera to write its buffer to the card.

Is this normal?

I've seen the ads for the high speed cards, 45x!, 32x!, super fast!,
yadda, yadda, yadda, but do the really work? Will the 5700 actually
write the picture to the card faster on these cards? Is this just
marketing? Or do only the newer cameras take advantage of the high
speed cards? I've been lusting after the 8 megapixel models like the
8700, the digital rebel, and the pentax (I forget the model), so I'm
curious if this is an even worse problem on the bigger data files.

Thanks for any suggestions.