I have a problem playing a couple games without any overclocks on, specifically Elite Dangerous and Star Wars Battlefront.  Seems random, but after about 15 minutes to about an hour, the game will crash with video driver error, and then precisionx doesn't detect my graphics card, and geforce experience won't detect it either.  I have to reboot the computer for it to show up again, then I have to underclock my card a little bit to not have it crash on me again.   I have always kept up to date on the driver, my psu is 1000watt, I don't get it.  04G-P4-2978-KR is the exact model. 

I'm in the same boat, with the FTW+ tho. It sometimes crashes under load, just with the factory overclock. I have to let the card draw more power to make it 100% stable. Any further manual overclock causes terrible instability (even if I only pull the power limit to 110% - it doesn't even get there tho). The driver goes into loop of crashes. It crashes, then reloads, then crashes again. Over and over. Until I close the game. Gotta say that I'm disappointed due to this fact. I'd gladly ask EVGA for exchange - but since I live in Poland, delivery costs are not worth it for me. Just the delivery would cost me about 10-15% of what's the card worth right now.

Yeah, I did. Debug mode "solves" - which confirms factory overclock causes crashes. In addition, as I've stated before - to keep card running seamlessly with factory oc, I have to let it overvoltage.
Dear author, if sending your card to RMA is not a bargain for you, as it is for me - you shoulda send it.

I actually followed your advice and have sent a support ticket regarding this case, just now. Now gonna wait patiently for the response - the last time I had to contact support I was very happy and satisfied with the support I've got. 
And yes, the problem was out of the box. I've got the card for over a year tho, turned in my GTX970 for the FTW+ through the Ste-up programme.
Funny stuff is that the card seems to handle benchmarks like Unigine Valley pretty well, even if I overclock it further - but when I just run a game with any manual overclock, driver starts to crash.
Another thing I have noticed, with the factory overclock, card runs very ok-ish. Crashes happen during gaming from time to time (Starcraft, Tomb Raider even CS:GO), but if I play any youtube video in the background during gaming, it nearly always crashes. I have somewhat-fixed it by adding the voltage - but I must say I am not happy with such "fix" since I've paid premium for a premium card.

have you tried running some overvoltage to see if it stabilizes? if it's a jagged edge factory oc and you just have a lame duck gpu i agree on sending it in but would be curious to try +30-40mv to see if it holds stable with everything else stock
 
also...what power supply do you have? if it's some cheap $29.95 er that could also be suspect