Hi, any help would be greatly appreciated; I've been working on this for weeks now...

Specs:

cpu : AMD fx-8150
m/b : AM3+ ASUS M5A97 R2.0 AMD970
ram : 16g 1666mhz DDR3
v/c : sapphire radeon hd 7970 o/c with boost
h/d : kingston 240g ssd
o/s : win 8
p/s : corsair 650w
cooling : corsair H80

I have tried incremental steps, but constant freezing past 3.9Mhz ??!!!!! I've tried through bios, and even through AsusAI suite... I have done it all... Up the voltage, disable power saving options, tried playing around with the multipliers and frequencies... nothing seems to allow me to go past the 3.9 mark.

Even more sad, the only way it gets to 3.9mhz mark is with the automated 'Optimal Mode' in the bios EZ-mode...  But when I start from there and deactivate settings and up the multiplier and voltages, it craches again... URGH.

I then put every setting in bios to default, put the multiplier to 20x, and kept everything else at default... Tried stress testing, and it freezes... 

Do I have a dud ????

 

No, you have a 970 chipset board which is NOT an overclockers board, it lacks the enthusiast features of the 990 based boards.

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Crosshair IV Formula, Phenom II x4 965 w/ Corsair H60, 8 GiB OCZ Platinum DDR3 1600, XFX HD 7970 Ghz, 512GB Vertex 4, 256GB Vector, 240GB Agility 3, Creative X-Fi Titanium w/ Creative Gigaworks S750, SeaSonic X750, HP ZR2440w, Win 7 Ultimate x64

I agree that the 970 boards would not be a overclockers choice but OP should still beable to get that chip past 3.9.

 

philzzz, I would run a memory test and also try running only two sticks of ram just to see if it helps or not.

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PhenomII 1100T// Asus Sabertooth R2.0 // 2X HD5850 CF //8Gb of 1866Mhz ram, H50 cooling, HX850W psu all stuffed into a NZXT Phantom case.


Was a member of AMD Processer forum since 2008. Last post count 1818.

I use an older AMD 770 based board but my Phenom does not like it with the multiplier higher than 17 so I resorted to the base clock to perk up the rig and I was able to get 4 GHz easy that way.

so try the stock multiplier and use the base clock.

 

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Corsair Carbide 300R, TX850V2, Asus M5A99FX PRO R2.0, Phenom II 965 C3 BE, G.SKILL RipjawsX DDR3-2133 8 GB, GTX 260 SLI, Asus PA238QR, Windows 7 x64 Enterprise

Asus M4A77D, Athlon64 X2 4200+, DDR2-800 6 GB, HD 5450, cheap 450W, Server 2012