Oh, for the love of...
Turns out my audio trouble was because of Dynamic Energy Saver, a tool that comes for DCS enabled motherboards from Gigabyte. It works by enabling only so many power-phases as necessary. Voltage and frequency are also throttled, but that happens without the tool as well, by EIST and C1E.
Not sure if the phase regulation or the software itself causes the issues, but I'm guessing the utility since I don't recall any issues running it in 32-bit OS.
And with that, all my Win7 headaches are gone.
Now if only they could make it a little more affordable... maybe I'll just get a version for 1 user.
