what happened to the challenge here? There's a new credit system that awards the computers that produce more structures so what computers produce the most?

Two things happenned. First of all none of the "vocal group" took up the challenge and second, with the release of the new credit system and the realisation that it doesn't really show the differences in a machines capability due to the differences in work units, the challenge is meaningless.
Here's where you went wrong with your current system:
If your P4-3000 has X capabilities, it should get an amount of credit equal to those capabilities and it should get that amount for every hour/day,ect that it is working as a dedicated cruncher.
If my DX3600 has X capabilities +y it should be getting that amount of credit every hour it is working as a dedicated cruncher and that is the crux of this particular problem..That just isn't happenning due to the flaws in the current system, ergo, there is no way to compare the actual capabilities of the different systems.There should be no variation.
It's the variation in time that it takes to create the decoys between the differnet WU that creates the problem.
If you get X points for creating a decoy that takes 10 minutes to do on one WU and on the next work unit on the same machine with all factors on that machine being equal it takes 12 minutes or 15 and you get the same x points for that decoy, how can you compare different machines capabilities?
It's impossible and by that error in the credit system and accepting it as something that is just their you drive away anyone with any competitive spirit.
That's not even addressing all the other issues that need to be settled.
Movieman

the new credit system awards the producer in luck system ive seen the credits granted and this is a joke really.

i have a constructive criticism for you, realise we the crunchers are the base of this project without us the project dies, if we think a part of the project is flawed, the project managers should adress it, we hold the share me make the work and we dont see the benefits as we should? i think you guys really dont appreciate what we are doing here.

But that is what the project currently does - adressing the concerns of the user. They created a new credit system, users where not happy, they change it and tweak it and they listen to proposals how to make it really fair. What is your constructive criticism in this post? They should listen to the user base. They do! But the user base does not speak with one voice. So they need to seek a compromise. Or do you wanted to say, they should listen to the position of XS because we are the big guys?

G.Skill makes some awesome memory. I haven't had that particular set, but I've had two other sets, and they've been champs.

The Retail C2D comes with a HSF, which should be fine for running stock. I've heard that the fan on it is a little loud though.

we will NOT be backdating credit totals

I was just looking at the results for the top teams:

Name Members Recent average credit Total Credit Country
1 XtremeSystems 246 311,043.65 25,052,975.81 International
2 Dutch Power Cows 1071 261,066.85 24,927,849.52 Netherlands
3 Free-DC 154 174,032.69 28,027,746.46 International

this is serious computing power; I think the recent credit numbers correspond to
3,100, 2,600 and 1,740 computers crunching more or less full time
for these top three teams which is fantastic!

It looks like the DPC have nearly caught up to XtremeSystems in total credit, but XtremeSystems is
moving ahead faster. Why does Free-DC have the most total credits but considerably less than the other two teams recently?

We will have to have prizes when CASP finishes at the end of July for the top overall team and the
top team during CASP. definitely a citation in the science paper on rosetta distributed contributing at the minimum!