I have a gaming 970 Motherboard which I just purchased too!! My phenom II x4 965's pins broke and I had an old phenom II x2 b59 laying around so that's what I had to use. Well, I never realized that this processor could actually be unlocked and work as a quad core!! After finding this out I wanted to unlock the potential of this processor because a dual core.. well, you can't play ANY games no matter how good your setup is, so I realized that there was a feature on my motherboard that automatically unlocks these cores.. Well on the gaming 970 it wasn't easy.. I tried and tried. (using OC genie and everything) NO PROGRESS... NOTHING! Well i kept raising the voltage, thinking that was the issue and that didn't work except make it overheat basically. Then i looked up the default clock for unlocked processors which is 1.4 for that specific one. Well automatically the voltage was at about 1.45 or maybe 1.46-7 even. Well, I figured I would LOWER it, hell why not? At least give it a try!! To my amazement... THIS WORKED. On the 970 gaming this is what you have to do to unlock those cores that you NEED! I'll post pics on what my settings are on my Mobo so you can copy or maybe try this yourself. I called MSI support and everything... and that was a JOKE I even told them about my solution so hopefully... yes, hopefully.. help someone else with the issue.. All they could tell me was, " well if it works, it works, if it doesn't, it doesn't...) like reallly!??... wow GREAT support guys... anyway I hope it helps, know this is an old post but this board isnt!!! GOOD LUCK!