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While not the best sound card out there for quality (like M-Audio's cards are), the Audigy 2 will be much better than that onboard sound. If you're gonna spend that much money and effort to get a good sound card, why not get a better speaker system (with 3, 4, 5 or 6 speakers) from a company...
Your mobo could be resetting your CPU speed due to high temperatures. Check to make sure your heatsink is properly seated on the CPU and that all the fans in your system are working properly.
Nice looking rig, but I'd go with a Venice core if I were you. It's less expensive, and most importantly, uses less power at idle and under load. As a result it'll probably run cooler and overclock better than a Newscastle core.
Why not run some benchmarks at each setting and see which is fastest for you? My intuition would be to set the RAM to have the fastest timings, even if it means a slightly slower bus.
so what's the easiest way to log all the important stuff i'm doing, like which protiens i'm folding, how long it takes, if they fold properly or run iunto trouble.... ????