Make sure you've set the CPU usage to 100% for fastest folding. It rarely affects performance unless your burning or gaming. Your HD obviously won't affect the speed of folding but it may be that you have a WU assignment which takes longer than average. 01bolandn gets 5000 frame WUs because her PC is a fast 3.4Ghz one. The Tinker cores i don't think use the optimised code so that may be it. But I've not heard of the steps thing only frames.