Problem with the SONAR CPU meter please...?

Greetings!

I have a problem that I really need some help with.  I have built my own PC, an upgrade to my last custom build, and it's an i7 860/4GB RAM/2TB beast :)  I'm running Windows 7 32 bit as well.

I have already been reading up all on things related to core parking and such; I believe that is all taken care of.  I took care of everything in the BIOS and all seems well, for the most part.

Basically, my problem is...I spent all this money on a new PC and I'm still getting clicks/pop/dropouts in SONAR running certain soft synths.  Yes, I know that they are CPU intensive, but my actual All_CPU gadget shows literally 3-5% load when SONAR is showing up to 55% at times!  How can I balance this out?  The point of getting this new PC was to finally get to use synths I wanted :(

Now, I managed to get dropouts gone for the most part, but often times as I said, my actual i7 CPU is at 4% and SONAR is at 45%.  I get massive clicks/pops at 45% CPU in SONAR, but yet my CPU itself is laughing and barely breaking a sweat.

At first I thought it was a synth-problem, such as poor coding or whatever - it happens, I know.  But 4 or 5 synths now have this problem, and I have no idea what is going on.  I've test Rhino2, Largo, polyKB, and even Zebra2. 

I know that my sound card works fine as well, I'm using the AP192 which works flawlessly on all applications.  I've played with the buffers on the settings as well, maxxing it out to like 4096 samples!  Still....at 40-50% CPU in SONAR, major cracks and pops.

Can someone tell me why my actual i7 is barely working at ALL (4-5%) load, but in SONAR it's about to crumble running just one of those soft synths? :( Please tell me what I can do to make my SONAR CPU low like my i7 CPU.  It's very frustrating.

In Reaper 3, the CPU for all the synths I mentioned stay at around 4-6% CPU (in DAW)....which basically matches my actual i7 CPU readout, although I know they are technically measuring "different" types of CPU, so to speak....but still.  In Reaper, I actually load one instance of each of the synths above (combined), and the CPU total was about 10%.  That same combination of synths/polyphony brought SONAR up to 67% CPU.  What's going on here?  Am I missing a setting?  Surely this can't be only me...If you would like screenshots, let me know...if its easier to help.

Why does SONAR have a 30-40% increase of CPU per synth, in this case?  And, of course, I prefer to work in SONAR because that's what I've been using for years now...but, this is very concerning.  Can someone tell me how I can get SONAR to respond more efficiently to CPU/soft synth usage?  Thanks :)

Thank you so much everyone....