Continuous Shooting (Burst) Mode Question

I was out taking pictures today, shooting in Continuous (Burst) Mode on my D5100 and for the first time ever, my camera stopped shooting for a moment to digest the pictures in the buffer. This has never happened before. I've used a 32MB Class 10 Sandisk SD card forever and shoot in Fine/Large/JPG.

I shot seven pictures before the buffer pause. Maybe I'd not exceeded this count before; I'm just not sure. My SD card is getting somewhat full as well.

Is seven pictures about the max with the D5100? Does a near full card have any effect on the camera's processing power?

Thank you.

How much memory left on the card is not relevant until the card gets filled up. Then you won't be able to fire the camera at all.

7 frames before the buffer fills sounds about right for that class of camera.