bcavnaugh
 PM me if you want to trade one of my GTX 690 Cards for your GTX 980 Card.
I have them with the Stock Blower or with the Hydro Copper Water Block.

Fixed modrigs link

thekeemo
I have contacted nvidia.
They should be helpful.

How so?

You need to take into account the 690 is only a 2gb per gpu, vs the 980 have 4gb. You will be able to turn settings up that you were not able to turn up before, and you will possibly lose some fps, but we you run everything at ultra vs a few settings at high or medium to keep the memory usage down, you will see a difference.

You are looking to avoid the 980, so I suggest waiting for the 690 to come back into stock. Nvidia is going to tell you to speak with EVGA, since they don't control evga rma policy.

I would like to point out an Anandtech review for the 980Ti that contains comparisons for compute benchmarks including a 980 and 690, where in all but one test the 980 outperforms the 690:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9306/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review/15 
 
Looking at the other benchmarks from the review, depending on the resolution and the game the 980 outperforms the 690 most of the time. For example, the Shadow of Mordor benchmark has the 690 edging out the 980 at 3840x2160 Very High Quality by just over 1FPS, but the 980 at 2560x1440 Ultra Quality is nearly triple the frame rate. 
 
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9306/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review/6 
 

 
 

 
Since you are unhappy with the 980 as a replacement, per Chris' posted earlier we do have 690 that passed testing today that we will be sending out to you instead. If there's anything else we can do for you, please let us know.

EVGATech_JaesonW
I would like to point out an Anandtech review for the 980Ti that contains comparisons for compute benchmarks including a 980 and 690, where in all but one test the 980 outperforms the 690:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9306/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti-review/15 
 
Looking at the other benchmarks from the review, depending on the resolution and the game the 980 outperforms the 690 most of the time. For example, the Shadow of Mordor benchmark has the 690 edging out the 980 at 3840x2160 Very High Quality by just over 1FPS, but the 980 at 2560x1440 Ultra Quality is nearly triple the frame rate. 
Since you are unhappy with the 980 as a replacement, per Chris' posted earlier we do have 690 that passed testing today that we will be sending out to you instead. If there's anything else we can do for you, please let us know.

I am seeing the 690 being more powerful than the 980 in gaming and in render time. 
What I understood from Chris that my card was going to go through revalidation which takes months.

He's BEEN offered a 690, and doesn't want it. Instead he wants an upgrade to a 980 Ti. That's the main problem here.

TheCovertCamper
[Jensen Huang. It was my last resort and I ended up with well over $1500 in Nvidia products from various issues where I hit a stalemate with either Nvidia or another company's customer service.

Other companies customer service?

How did you get in touch with the President and CEO of NVidia? Jen-Hsun Huang (not Jensen)

I would call him and request more credits if yiu have that kind of relationship with him. Why waste time with anyone else's customer service?

Scarlet-Tech

TheCovertCamper
[Jensen Huang. It was my last resort and I ended up with well over $1500 in Nvidia products from various issues where I hit a stalemate with either Nvidia or another company's customer service.

Other companies customer service?

How did you get in touch with the President and CEO of NVidia? Jen-Hsun Huang

I would call him and request more credits if yiu have that kind of relationship with him. Why waste time with anyone else's customer service?

This should not be their problem. This is a last resort really.

Juanse737
Well, the 960 is basically a rebranded 770 which is a rebranded 680 and a 690 is two 980s on SLI, so 2 960 on sli should have a bit more of performance than a 690, and the 960s on sli get more performance than a 980 as seen on this benchmark https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e__ffwCLL8g

The 960 is not a rebranded 770 different architectures.
If you look at the original post you can see that its close but the 690 is more powerful than two in SLI..
But they are a good indicator.

deathlokke
You say you were told it takes a month or so for re-certification; how long have they had your card? If it's been less than a month, how could they re-certify your card in less time than that?

The card has been dead for a month. shipping getting it approved etc.
The normal thing is EVGA replaces the GPU for something of equal or greater power within a couple of days and then refurbish the faulty item.
They are offering me a weaker GPU or wait for my GPU to be re-certified in a few months (not month). Neither of which I should have to accept.

But they AREN'T offering to re-certify your card, they're offering to send you a different already-certified card today.