'' It must be a bad production because the first card did exactly the same ''
hmmmmm...... 2 cards that did the same or reoccurring failure ?? that sounds kinda suspect something else maybe going on that's causeing the cards to fail like bad PSu voltage regulation or even bad motherboard voltage regulation to the cards slots [????] and then causing a premature failing over time of the card your using .
one card goes bad call it bad card and bad luck 2ed card fails as well in the same way I'd scratch my head on whats up I'm sure theres lots of guys with that S/N 970 card still running happly today with out issue so bad production
I like to do is look at end user reviews like from here and say amazon to see what said from guys that bought and use the same card to see if any like complaints and how many
2ed review '' Worked for JUST over a year''
LOL. I seen that and thought it was you ??
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814487077 by the way was there not like a evga released bios for the FTW line to fix a issue ??
well looks like it was for a fan issue , but you never what else was involved ???
https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/2i9ysk/discussion_evga_releases_bios_updates_for/ then there were a few things as like these
http://www.overclock.net/t/1522035/evga-970-ftw-tdp-issues-requires-bios-mod-to-fix https://forums.evga.com/Modded-BIOS-to-fix-970-FTW-severe-throttling-issues-w-link-m2247507.aspx one thing you got to remember is what said here and a 970 is a make shift card to start with not a true NVidia card ,so.....
If you've already worked your way though our GTX 980 review, then you'll know that unlike that card, Nvidia is not producing a reference model of the GTX 970, the second enthusiast-grade Maxwell part that replaces the GTX 770 in the product stack. The images on this page do not reflect a ready to buy product. Instead, Nvidia's AICs will be able to purchase the GPU and memory chips, but after that it's up to them, and this will undoubtedly lead to a high degree of variability when it comes to PCB and cooler design as well as factory overclocks. [bit-tech.net]
Furthermore, as we mentioned in our GTX 980 review, GTX 970 has been a pure virtual (no reference card) launch, which means all of NVIDIA’s partners are launching their custom cards right out of the gate. A lot of these have been recycled or otherwise only slightly modified GTX 700/600 series designs, owing to the fact that GM204’s memory bus has been held at 256-bits and its power requirements are so low. [Anandtech .com]
good luck