Recording Stutter

[SageDonkey]

I have been a Sage user now for about 3 months. I recently built a new PC to be my home theater PC. Problem is that since doing that, all recordings from the Hauppauge device stutter *unless* I set the quality of recordings to Max Quality. All recordings made on the old PC do not stutter and they are at lower qualities (DVD, DVD Long Play, etc). Anything below the 5.9G/hour seems to cause pixelation and stuttering that is repeatable (usually at 5 min intervals or so) when I play the file back outside of Sage (Windows Media Player). I also have my Motorola 6200 STB hookup via firewire to the HTPC and can record and watch SD and HD programs with no hiccups, stutters, tears, or other flaws. I have tried all different types of tweaks on the forums (from registry edits on the Hauppause device, to reinstallation, to complete rebuilding of the system) to no avail. Does any one a) have this problem b) have other suggestions of how to fix it?

System Stats:
NEW PC:
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HARDWARE-
AMD X2 3800+, Gigabyte GAK8NP-SLI, 1 G RAM, Gigabyte GV-NX66Y256DE PCI Express Video Card, DVI out to Panasonic HDTV, 1 SATA Connected Western Digital SE16 320 G Internal Hard Drive (RECORDING Drive, 2 partitions - system partition is NTFS 4K clusters and 20G, the other partition is NTFS with 64K clusters and 300G - this 300G parition is the recording drivie), Two Exernal Maxtor One Touch II 300G Drives (both NTFS formatted at 64K clusters) for DVDs, Pictures, and Music, and my recording devices are the Hauppauge USB-2 hooked ini via the USB-2 port and Motorola 6200 via firewire

SOFTWARE-
Windows XP Sp2, Sage TV 4.1.3, PowerDVD 6, Cyberlink codecs that came with that (don't know the version, but I downloaded it 2 weeks ago), Sonic Cineplayer codecs (don't know the version, but I downloaded it 2 weeks ago)

OLD PC:
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HARDWARE-
Dell XPS t700r PIII 700 MHz, 512 MB of RAM, 3D Fusion GeForce MX 4000 Video Card, 13 G System Drive connected viai IDE, Two Exernal Maxtor One Touch II 300G Drives (both NTFS formatted at 64K clusters) for Recording, DVDs, Pictures, and Music, and my recording devices are the Hauppauge USB-2 hooked in via the USB-2 port and Motorola 6200 via firewire

SOFTWARE-
Windows XP Sp2, Sage TV 4.1.3, PowerDVD 6, Cyberlink codecs that came with that (don't know the version, but I downloaded it 2 weeks ago), Sonic Cineplayer codecs (don't know the version, but I downloaded it 2 weeks ago)


In theory, the new PC is better, but it just can't record well via the Hauppauge Usb2 *unless* I max out the quality. Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated. HELP...Please - I am very frustrated by this.