My burner is a Sata dvd burner that can burn upto 18x. The dvds i have are 1-16x. When i go to burn data too them i can have it on 18x. It seems to burn fine.
More than likely it will be reverting back to 16X. I don't think the difference between 16X-18X would be that big. I mean, I burn Dvds in the space of 5 mins with a 16X IDE drive.