Are you using a displayport cable? If yes, is it vesa certified? When crashing to the black screen do the fans on your gpu go to 100%?

Does the issue occur over dvi & displayport? How old is your psu? Does underclocking the card -500 on both the core & memory prevent the black screen from occurring?
 
Note: Use msi afterburner for the underclocking.

Sajin
Does the issue occur over dvi & displayport? How old is your psu? Does underclocking the card -500 on both the core & memory prevent the black screen from occurring?
 
Note: Use msi afterburner for the underclocking.

The issue still occurs over both dvi and displayport after having tested both today, and the psu is just shy of 3 years old. Thus far after underclocking the card by -500 on both the core and memory the crash has yet to occur. I'm testing Shadow of Mordor currently, and before I was lucky to get 10 minutes of game time whereas I've yet to crash after an hour or two.
 

Samsander
We have been over this 1000 times. There is no magic solution to make it work at advertised FTW clocks. Early 980 FTW's have issues. RMA the card.
If you like I can share a BIOS that locks the card at 1.137v and sets the clocks to stock reference. It will not crash anymore but you'll lose factory OC and the whole point of buying the FTW edition in the first place.
 
Stable clock for the early 980 FTW's is 1327Mhz Core / 4001Mhz Memory @1.137v. Anything above that on core or voltage and it will crash with black screen sooner or later.
 
Edit:
 
After flashing the BIOS set +150Mhz Core and +500Mhz Memory in MSI Afterburner. You should be good to go.
 

Is this a common issue? Would you suggest I flash the BIOS or simply RMA the card?

I'm having the same issue as the OP, what is kind of funny here is I was just reading the link you posted prior to finding this post. I found it on google and I am getting ready to RMA mine,but need 10 forum posts to be able to PM who it is suggested to PM in the other post

Samsander
We have been over this 1000 times. There is no magic solution to make it work at advertised FTW clocks. Early 980 FTW's have issues. RMA the card.
If you like I can share a BIOS that locks the card at 1.137v and sets the clocks to stock reference. It will not crash anymore but you'll lose factory OC and the whole point of buying the FTW edition in the first place.
 
Stable clock for the early 980 FTW's is 1327Mhz Core / 4001Mhz Memory @1.137v. Anything above that on core or voltage and it will crash with black screen sooner or later.
 
Edit:

After flashing the BIOS set +150Mhz Core and +500Mhz Memory in MSI Afterburner. You should be good to go.

 
I realize I'm very late to the party, but is this BIOS still floating around somewhere?

Samsander
We have been over this 1000 times. There is no magic solution to make it work at advertised FTW clocks. Early 980 FTW's have issues. RMA the card.
If you like I can share a BIOS that locks the card at 1.137v and sets the clocks to stock reference. It will not crash anymore but you'll lose factory OC and the whole point of buying the FTW edition in the first place.
 
Stable clock for the early 980 FTW's is 1327Mhz Core / 4001Mhz Memory @1.137v. Anything above that on core or voltage and it will crash with black screen sooner or later.
 
Edit:

After flashing the BIOS set +150Mhz Core and +500Mhz Memory in MSI Afterburner. You should be good to go.
 

Any chance anyone still has this bios ? Currently have a gtx980 ftw, would appreciate it if someone could upload the file for me. Have searched everywhere but can't find it. Thank you all.

Hey Folks,
 
Does anyone have a fresh link to Samsander's custom vbios? The link he posted here in 2017 is dead now.
 
I have inherited a pair of 980 FTWs that were in someone's closet for several years. I've gone through the 20 page thread and many others trying things, logging as much as I can, and I cannot get it to run stably no matter what I do.  My test is to run guild wars 2 at any settings, and it reproduces the classic crash shown at 2:20 on the youtube video in Samsander's post here:
 
Specifically, monitor output dies, audio continues. I can actually alt-f4 the game and use win-x, u, r to restart the machine without needing to hard cut the power, but all that has to be done blind because the display does not come back, until rebooted.  Worth noting that I didn't see anyone try win-ctrl-shift-b which resets your graphics drivers. I have tried that, and I get the characteristic system beep in the audio that it always gives upon resetting the drivers, but the display does not return.
 
What I want: I really just want this card to be stable in any configuration so I can play some games. I don't care if it's at half power.  I've tried -200mhz clock and 80% power limited (in afterburner, but I'm swithcing to precision for the future testing) and those had no effect on the crash.
 
Of course, the agreed fix for this issue is RMA, but it's now 7 years after the fact and I'm not the original buyer so I'm skeptical that EVGA would accept an RMA from me at this point. I'll give it a shot, but in the meantime it's the weekend and I'd like to play a bit if I can get it stable, but so far I can't. I have tried the following:
 
Install the nvidia 1.3 and 1.4 displayport firmware patch
run game in windowed mode
wipe and reinstall current drivers
Enable DSR in the nvidia control panel
debug mode in nvidia control panel
Higher Fan speed
Maximum fan speed
Downclock -100mhz
Downclock 200mhz and memory by -50mhz
debug mode to reduce boost
Power limit dropped to 80%
Game graphics set to maximum
Game graphics set to minimum (crash took up to 30 seconds in minimum settings instead of <10 on high settings)
 
I have not yet tried (but don't have high hopes for):
Test 2015 or earlier drivers
go back to 350.12 drivers


Does anyone have settings that will be stable on a pre-RMA GTX 980, at any power level?
 
System specs:
Mobo: Intel  DP67BG
CPU: Core i7 2600k
GPU: EVGA GTX 980 FTW
RAM: 24gb DDR3 @ 1333mhz
PSU: Forgot make/model but I think it's a 650w

If you get anywhere let us know. I too would like to try his driver for the same reasons.

sp1hund
I have the same issue with my 980ti acx 2.0. It ended up not booting at all until I disconnected the card.
 
Does anyone know what the issue may be? Of if there is any fix for it?

Mine is stable at -300mhz but the only solution EVGA ever offered was an RMA. I'm not sure if that offer is still open

Hi i have a 980ti that crashes my pc hard.
like the mem sticks keep glowing the card go's all black no led there any more,but only way to get the pc going again is flip the switch on the back of my psu.
Could this be temp issue or is this probs a broken pcb?
I have no more rma on this card and as things look now i cant buy a new card. atleast for a normal price 
 
gpu: model is 980ti evga acx 2.0
psu: 1000watt psu antec
cpu: 3700x
mem:16 gigs xpg
hdd: nvme samsung 970 1t
I have uninstalled the gpu for now i used ddu to wipe the drivers the last time it did this, and it worked for a while (about a month or two).
But last week it started crashing again only this time realy hard,  
and i am no expert ad computers as wel but this did not look good ad all.
 
Is there a way to fix this?
smit