I made this post in the motherboards forum right after my brand new PC crashed playing Skyrim:
http://forums.evga.com/Cr...ve-beeps-m2359469.aspx Short version - my EVGA GTX 970 SC (the 2974 card) won't play games (Skyrim, specifically) at stock, factory-overclocked speed. It crashes even with Precision running and the GPU temp in the sixties - it was so "cool" the GPU Boost was boosting it to 1404 mhz. The system needs a hard shutdown and cold reboot before the video will come back.
Last night, I used Precision to tune the card -114 mhz, to match the "Stock" GTX 970. Skyrim ran for 33 mins with no crash; boosting up to 1297 mhz, even. Even at SC speeds and an accidental .5 ghz overclock of the CPU, it will still run any benchmark I throw at it, even OC Scanner stress test.
This thread is that of someone with the same card replacing literally everything else and still having the issue, so I'm reluctant to go down the RMA path based on that and what I've read here in the GTX 980 FTW thread, which is pretty much the same issue I and other 970 owners are seeing. Unless a similar fix is found for the GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0.
Assuming they don't, I'm wondering what the best option is:
1. Upgrade/step up to a 980 that isn't affected (a 980 is way more card than I need, with a step up cost of at least $150)
2. Keep it and hope for a fix for EVGA 970 SC ACX 2.0 cards (trick is to get EVGA to admit, find, and fix it first)
3. RMA a card that is less than a week old - which doesn't appeal because I would want a brand-new card, not an RMA'ed one, and the fact mine has the free backplate on it.
Like I said in my support ticket; I don't have any spare equipment to test this card with. Nothing that isn't five years old, anyway.
Any ideas? (Okay, that wasn't short at all...)