first off, specs: i7 2600k overclocked to 4.2/ 16 gb ddr3 1600mhz/ corsair HX1000 power supply/ EVGA 570 HD SLI 2.5 gb version/ NZXT Phantom case with several fans added.
 
i have been at trying to get a stable overclock in Battlefield 3 for 2 days now, hours on end. about ready to tear my hair out, so im sorry if this seems like just a bunch of random thoughts. I first looked across the forums on the internets to find a nice decent overclock for my card and it seems lots of people are hitting 850-900 mhz on the core no problem, so i started there, i set the bar high thinking i got some good cars and cooling to handle it. NOPE. lowered it down to 800 mhz and BF3 still craps out, not even overclocking the memory yet. i tryed 800mhz at stock volts, and raised it incrementally up the bar using the presision x bar meter thingy.
 
now here is the kicker, its only in BF3! i've run Heaven benchmark tryed multiple games, and they all run fine, except BF3. temps are fine, the cards idle around 35-40c and at load when i overclock them i hit lower 80s which is hot but they should handle that. i dont know what to do, im about to just keep them at stock and be done with it. posting here to see if anyone can think of something i havent tryed yet but i think thats doubtful. im starting to think maby i just got some bad cards, idk****.

You got water cooled cards? Are you maxing out your fan?  Custom fan profile?  Is the card artifacting or the driver crashing? You leave a lot of variables in your rant and it makes it hard to give any suggestions. Card runs stock at 732... there are alot of versions of 570.. including Classified which has beefed up components and runs stock at ~825.... so I'm assuming some of the people who you see talking about running their 570 at 900 is with water or have a classified or both.  I see common clocks in the ~800 Mhz range.... once again though to recap.. Need for profile or just close to max steady fan speed to overclock.. I'm assuming you have a regular 570HD with Stock cooler... so yea.. 

ok well i just leave my fan set to auto, i guess that's the problem, but at around 60% they get loud. so what do you recommend me set my fan speed to? and no they are not on water. and when it happens, the game freezes, goes to black screen then usually says something like a dx11 error but i only get it overclocking though. driver is up to date, using the 196.10 driver. so what is the norm for fan speed?
 

Use the 295.73 Driver?

no i havent, i suppose i can try that, i thought it's outdated now that 196.10 is out? or am i wrong on this assumption lol
 

If you have 2 570s + that 2600K you really have no need to overclock them cards. That set up alone should handle ultra settings flawlessly. Or so I would think. 

But anyhow... you can use a custom fan profile say for the cards to kick up to that 60% at ~60 degrees and then have it ramp 10% for every 10 degrees for as long as you can stand the loudness .. aside from that you can just set it to the maximum loudness you can stand straight out.. generally a hum will fade into the background of your game playing if you get involved with a game... so either way if you want to experiment with overclocking those your going to have to experiment with fan profiles or a straight speed.. 

ok i will look into making a custom fan profile, thx. and i can play on ultra no problems but for some reason Rift brings my computer to its knees and i can benefit from overclocking in that game so that's mainly why im doing it.

Rift?  When I was still playin that it was on my 470s @ 5760 x 1080... odd.

I'm running the same setup minus the SLI and I have my 570 clocked to 850/1950 at 1.05V and I get about 70FPS on average in BF3. If I go any higher BF3 will crash. My temps stay around 70 with just stock cooling. I have my processor clocked to 4.5 with stock voltage and a Corsair H60 for cooling, soon to be fully water cooled after I get done sleeping my system and my 680 comes in.