I have an EVGA GTX970 SC, and it seems to be underperforming. On a lot of games such as FC4 the framerate is a lot worse than other people's with similar specs (I have an i5 3570 OC'd to 4ghz, 16gb ram at 1600). While they'll be getting 60-90 fps running FC4 maxed, I'm getting 40-50fps. The same thing happens in FFXIV. Another issue I am having is that when I try and overclock the card (with either precision x or msi afterburner, i've tried it with both), even a little bit, after 1-2 minutes of running a game, the drivers crash and the clock speeds drop back down to stock.
 
 
Do I have a bad card?

Another issue I noticed, which I'm not sure is the card or the monitor (although I did not ever see this happen with my HD7870) is that after a while certain colors will appear as if there is some pixelated sparkles or lead pencil dust. It's a bit hard to describe but it's dark, usually over red/orange colors. If I turn off my monitor and turn it back on though, the problem disappears. Is it the card or the monitor?

It's both outside of games and in games. 
 
Here is a picture of it.