What you reckon I should do? If I'm totally honest, I'm not that bothered whether I can OC or not... Would have been nice too considering I almost paid 300 beans for this card.
And to add the coil whine.

rstaniforth
What you reckon I should do? If I'm totally honest, I'm not that bothered whether I can OC or not... Would have been nice too considering I almost paid 300 beans for this card.
And to add the coil whine.

To be honest I only get about 400 more points in firestrike with my FTW overclocked. I doubled my score going from a msi 7870 to this 970.

rstaniforth
What you reckon I should do? If I'm totally honest, I'm not that bothered whether I can OC or not... Would have been nice too considering I almost paid 300 beans for this card.
And to add the coil whine.

Overclocking is always a crap shoot, sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't.  That's why a lot of people are willing to pay a bit more up front for "guaranteed" factory overclock models, because they are typically binned and tested to potentially hit higher performance levels.  Unless there is something else defective on your card its just missing the OC lottery.  EVGA may work with you on the coil whine but otherwise I wouldn't worry about it, still a super fast card!
 
That said, the biggest limiter of these 970s as overclockers is going to be the low power target on these cards.  I think Nvidia did this purposely so they don't get too close to the 980.  The 970 has a rated TDP of 135W and a Power Target of 110%, so that's a total new power target of 148.5W.  The GTX 980 on the other hand has a stock rated TDP of 165W, but the BIOS allows for 125% Power Target so 206.25W total.  That's a massive difference in max TDP of 58W or so which allows the GTX 980s to clock higher and more sustainably.  Touching Voltage is actually not what you want to do with a hard power target, because that will actually make you hit your hard power limit sooner.  HardOCP did a nice review of this, and you can apply this theory to your 970 as well.
 
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/10/08/nvidia_geforce_gtx_980_overclocking_video_card_review/12#.VHE0qPgtBlU

We know NVIDIA doesn't like this, but if some manufacturer out there could provide a version of the GTX 970 and 980 with a special BIOS mode that removes the power limit and we think only awesomeness would come of that decision.
 
It is because of this TDP/Power Limit that we must look at overclocking the GTX 980 and 970 differently.  No longer can we just raise the voltage as high as possible and see where the overclock lands.  Now, we must balance voltage with clock speed, keeping it as low as possible so that the power limits don't kick in and throttle the GPU.

 
 
With Maxwell, the only real cure is to find a custom BIOS that increases the power target (either % or total) of your card, but this is really outside of any warranty at this point as you do risk bricking your card.  I know EVGA allows you to flash to approved BIOS to fix issues, but flashing to non-approved BIOS is probably outside of those provisions.

First... Welcome to the forums
 
If you just bought the 970 and have coil whine I would send it back for an exchange.
Where did you purchase it from?

Honestly, if your gaming at 1080 its not really worth the extra money for the 980, unless your running a 120/144Hz monitor.

I have a 58% SC and I can get to +113 core and +500 mem. To get there, you need to up the power limits in the BIOS by using Maxwell BIOS Tweaker and upping the rail limits. I have not added any extra voltage as it does nothing for me.

I went from 1390 with occasional power limits capping the performance to 1430 with never getting power limits hit. 1435 is completely unstable for me, whatever I do. Be warned, the BIOS tweaker is just that. You load it with a copy of the official EVGA firmware and change the settings... then reflash the new one.
 
I took the power limits from the BIOS offered in this thread: http://www.overclock.net/t/1517316/extract-and-flash-gtx-970-and-980-firmware-nolimits-and-gamestable/0_50
 
and then dropped them about 10% as even with that I'm only hitting 90% power maximum. I went from a power limit of 160W to 200W but I usually only hit 180W (90%). No need to over do it, IMO.
 
Latest version of Maxwell BIOS Tweaker is 1.39, I think.

Fair enough. Can't blame you. Its not a huge difference anyhow and probably not worth the risk. It's too bad EVGA stopped at 160W though as just a little bit more could remove the power limitations for most people.

All,
I've decided to go back to my stock settings for this.
After playing FarCry4 and Overwatch (Arma2:OA) last night, I had three video card driver fails.  Each time I lowered the GPU core clock by 10 but it didn't make much difference.  I even dropped the memory back down to Zero.  Still crashed.
And as rjohnson11 said above, this card has already been OC'd so I'm just guessing my card is at its max.  Which is fine.
 
I just want to say thanks to everyone for their input, I've certainly learnt a lot about overclocking in general.
 
Cheers guys, hopefully this thread will answer some of the questions other people have in the near future.
 

Slider6996 
I know ur pain all to well on from my 680 and to 780 and when u get a card that wont OC its like a kick in the jewels for the amount of money spent. I bought a 980 ACX version first and was highly dissapointed in the OC i got so much i just straight up sold it on ebay and bought a classified instead and def got the better for more of course, over kill maybe but ya. Anyway, if u have coil whine i would def send it back and with ur OC is even more reason. U paid for a top card and ur not getting top performance. Yes i know its lottery but since u have coil whine i would regardless. I know the waiting process sucks but u should def be able to OC a 970 more than that. 
 
If u still have ur old GPU i would use that in mean time while waiting for replacment. I did same with 980 when i sold it and waited to snag a classy instead. Hope u get it all straight.

Thanks for the advice mate.  See, after reading that it makes me want to send it back - The only thing stopping me is the waiting around.  I've still got my old card so from that perspective it isn't an issue.  What sort of turn around time is it?

rstaniforth

Slider6996 
I know ur pain all to well on from my 680 and to 780 and when u get a card that wont OC its like a kick in the jewels for the amount of money spent. I bought a 980 ACX version first and was highly dissapointed in the OC i got so much i just straight up sold it on ebay and bought a classified instead and def got the better for more of course, over kill maybe but ya. Anyway, if u have coil whine i would def send it back and with ur OC is even more reason. U paid for a top card and ur not getting top performance. Yes i know its lottery but since u have coil whine i would regardless. I know the waiting process sucks but u should def be able to OC a 970 more than that. 
 
If u still have ur old GPU i would use that in mean time while waiting for replacment. I did same with 980 when i sold it and waited to snag a classy instead. Hope u get it all straight.

Thanks for the advice mate.  See, after reading that it makes me want to send it back - The only thing stopping me is the waiting around.  I've still got my old card so from that perspective it isn't an issue.  What sort of turn around time is it?

 
Trust me u want too, ugh i honestly have not done a RMA in awhile but i mean longest i would think would be about a week unless u do advance RMA like poster just said, its where they send u card first and then u send card back. They do require a debit/credit card to like hold the funds just so u dont keep both cards obviously. If u dont do that way its still not long and u got a old GPU so i would advice u to do it honestly. Seen ppl reach 1500+ on 970s so ya, do it! lol :p