i have noticed with my EVGA GTX460 SE that my framerate is actually getting worse with higher OC's. Why is that?

Here is my regular OC setting and here is my current max.
OC1:
Core clock : 830
Shader clock : 1660
Memory clock : 1800


Max OC :

Core voltage 1062
Core clock : 850
Shader clock : 1700
Memory clock : 1900

This could just be a coincidence because my jackass friend spilled about 4 tablespoons of tea on my computer, but I've cleaned it up. I have noticed one of my motherboard PCI-E slots is damaged, but the one I'm works. Crysis 1 is not effected at all as I have been using it to test OC settings and system stability since the spill. I am in the process of RMAing both my graphics card and motherboard because of what happened. But I wanna see if anyone else is experiencing this problem so I can isolate issues.

If your OC is too high (causing artifacts or memory errors), it will actually decrease your performance. The memory on these newer cards has Error Checking and Control, so OCing your memory too much won't usually result in crashes, but it will downclock itself once there are errors (and reduce performance).

Your OC settings, even the lower ones, are probably too high. Although they're stable in Crysis 2, they wouldn't be in a DX10/11 game like Dragon Age 2. Dragon Age 2 has some people finding out that the STOCK clocks on their 400/500 series Nvidia cards are too high, let alone any OCing. I had my GTX 570 OC'd almost 10% on both core & memory clocks, which worked great in Crysis 2. When I play Dragon Age 2, I have to DOWNCLOCK my memory 100Mhz below the "stock" (it's OC'd out of the box like most cards are these days, but these things are NOT thoroughly tested, so expect to run any card at the reference clocks if you want true stability). And I already RMA'd the card once, but the brand new one also has this same issue where I need to clock it lower than stock. Oh, and FYI I don't have any heat or power issues in my case, that's been tested as well.

+1 try 800mhz core