CD-ROM drives have data read speads and audio read speeds. Your LG is a 40x - that's the data rating. It's possible the audio rating is 8x, based on what you've mentioned. Anyway...

In my experience, EAC, when set up to rip CDs and make sure there are no errors, does not rip quickly. My recently built Athlon 2500+ machine encodes very quickly, but the ripping leaves a little to be desired. This is done on a Lite-On DVD drive, and I typically get rip speeds of 3-7x.

All that said, it depends on how you have EAC set up, and then it depends on how good your particular drive may be for ripping audio. If you have some other drives lying around, you may want to try them out and see if you get quicker rips out of them. But double-check your EAC settings before you start swapping drives.