Hello , I am pretty late to the game as far as overclocking the i7 920.
Unfortunately early in my trials I had a power failure that set me back on time and money.
The power failure had nothing to do with overclocking, it was a bad 12v rail that took
way to long to figure out.  I know time is valuable so I will make this short.
 
Today I changed the CPU host frequency from default 133 to 163. (3.4ghz)
Set my ram to default and saved the bios. Booted fine.
My rig is running fine, temps are fine, games are running. I stress tested using
AIDA64 Extreme Edition. (Everest)
 
I am not having any issues. Thats my problem.
How can I make two minor changes and the overclock be stable?
I did research regarding the X58 and i7 920 and found endless bios setting
changes. I tried them...they failed. All that to ask this, how is this possible?
Any suggestion will not be ignored. I would like to keep the OC, unless I am
swimming in shark invested waters.
 
Here is my set up:
Processor: Intel i7 (920)D0 Stepping
Cooler: XIG Dark Knight
Mobo: Evga X58 (132-BL-E758-A1)
PSU: Corsair 1050HX (CMPSU-1000HX)
GPU: Evga GTX 570
RAM: 12 GB DDR3 Corsair Vengeance
Sound: HT/Omega Claro Halo XT
SDD1: 128 GB OCZ Vertex 2
HDD1: 640 GB WD Black
HDD2: 640 GB WD Black
HDD3: 1 TB WD Black

you should be very stable with 3.4 ghz, ive done a ton of overclocking on my i7 920, you could try 3.6ghz or somtimes even up to 3.8ghz without adding cpu vcore,  might need to add some cpu vtt if your uncore gets high enough, check out the guides in the sticky, id suggest the overclocking for dummies if your new to overclocking, and max base clock strategy if you got a high performance watercooling setup, and want to overclock above 4.3ghz or so.

Yellargh thanks for the advice. When I get ready to build again I am leaning towards water cooling.
 
I am new to overclocking and will tread lightly. This rig has served me well. (less the GTX 570 SC factory oc) Doesnt seem to be to fond of DX11 in any form. Heavan, 3DMark11, BF3,Crysis 2 all crash. I have to underclock to 732/1900. Thats running stock on the 920 and ram. But thats a headache for another day.
Tried all the known fixes and work arounds. All resulted in games crashing.

try this.  under voltage control change IOH Vcore to 1.15.  also by crash you mean nvidia crash or fast blue screen then restart? im gonna be away fir a few days due to having hand surgery but when i get back ill get your issues solved.

Crusheddream, the screen locks, then screen goes black. 3 seconds later I am back
to the desktop. Go to the event viewer and below in order Administrative Events:
 
Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered.
 
Followed by:
 
The program bf3.exe version 1.3.0.0 stopped interacting with Windows and was closed. To see if more information about the problem is available, check the problem history in the Action Center control panel.
Process ID: b3c
Start Time: 01cd54c1d078f5df
Termination Time: 268
Application Path: F:\Program Files (x86)Electronic ArtsCProgram Files (x86)Electronic Arts\Battlefield 3\bf3.exe

Report Id:
 
Bios is flashed, current video drivers. Have been at a lose for close to a year.