in my bit torrent client azureus, one of the option is to set propriety (and not just for this program, i c many options on suse overall having this propriety thing), and on my bit torrent client, i can choose either high propriety or low...
now iam not really sure the difference... iam thinking that high propriety will drain more CPU usage or something? if i set it to low propriety what will happen? will the dl speed slow?

You don't happen to mean "priority" do you? "Propriety" is the act of being proper. If you're talking about priority then a process/download with a higher priority will be favoured over one with a lower setting. Basically, in downloading the priority setting doesn't affect you THAT much. It only means that if azureus has to make a decision between downloading file A with a high priority and file B with a low priority then it will download A and B concurrently if bandwidth permits. If bandwidth does NOT permit then B gets slowed down or stopped.

ya i do mean priority =)
ok, but does changing the priority affect my computer's performance? like u know how in some programs, if u set the priority to low, it doesn't use up as much CPU

Well I've never used azuerus but in edonkey and clones the priority just means the download thing. If you're setting the priority level for a whole program then yes it can use more CPU. XMMS has a real time priority option so it can skip less. That leaves less CPU time for other apps when the computer is under high load.