flexy123
You cannot draw 75W from the slot since the 75W are shared with the +5V and the 3.3V.
 
The max. theoretical from *the slot* is 66W, this is also the value in the bios.

You're close. There's no +5 volts on the PCIe slot. So, 10 watts for the +3.3 and 65 watts for the +12v.

 
I did some extensive testing today. There is a scene in Heaven 4.0 (in front of a windmill) where I see Power Limit constantly fluctuating. (See my screen shot). This was with 100ms pulling, fastest MSI Aterburner can.
 
You see where I encircled it in yellow, frametime does NOT change and stays constant while Power Limit (and clock/voltage as well) is going up/down like crazy.
 
In other words: Throttling (switching a clock bin up/down) does NOT have an effect on performance, it doesn't cause stutter as claimed. 
Rest assured, if it would stutter or tear...we would see SOME change in frame times since this is the relevant metric here.

r0ach
Three reasons:
 
#1  Anyone that cares about things like mouse response doesn't install programs like Afterburner, so the slider option shouldn't be available to anyone that's actually seeking optimal gaming performance.  I mean, when's the last time you saw someone running Afterburner in a Counterstrike, DoTA, or League of Legends tournament?  I don't play to lose.
 
#2  My card was pulling up to 196w at default boost speeds of 1400, so setting it to 200w at default power slider is too low of a buffer.
 
#3  Why is it so hard to just *not* increase the power slider if you do install Afterburner?  Even if you do increase it, it's not going to do anything, you can still overclock the same.

Man, r0ach, thanks a lot. I always had the same issue with my card, just the way you describe it. But finally today I encouraged myself to flash my card´s bios, not without some fear as I had never done it before and knew it could be a risky process.

For now I am very glad with the result. This bios (the second one) really appears to improve the performance of the graphics card and suit better. I greatly apreciate your effort and sharing it with the community.

Kind regards.

I think the 'B' BIOS will give you better performance so if you want to flash a BIOS, flash the 'A'. And yes if you botch the flash the other BIOS will work.

kwkrnu72
I think the only thing the 2nd bios does, is change the fan curve.  I didn't notice any difference in it's ability to sustain a better clock.

I think it gives you a higher power limit along with slightly higher clocks.

I'm sold on needing to mod the bios on the 970FTW.  No matter what I do, it won't hold anything steady above 1493 boost clock, +100 offset, and +275 on the memory.  Anything above that, and it starts throttling down again.

So..I have a couple more stupid questions:

In step 2 of the flashing guide, it says to disable the display adapter.  I have two cards.  So, will it flash one at a time?  And...will I need to flash one at a time?  I have a 5820k, so no integrated GPU...if I disable both cards to flash them at the same time, what would then be used to display the video?  lol...I know, sounds really dumb, and I feel like an idiot asking, but....seems logical, that if I disable the cards, I won't have video any more.  

I'm glad you found something that works for you. The benchmark run looks really good. Thank you for sharing your results with the community. It's sure to help someone here in the future.

Thanks for the bios, would love to give it a try. My 66% asic card has trouble staying above 1500.
Can you please allow me to access your google drive?

Awesome thanks! Yes 970FTW here.
Will test it shortly.

Yes, the 970FTW+ has a higher TDP limit out of the box.  I'm not sure you'd need a bios update to keep from hitting the TDP on it.  GPUz would tell you if you are.  Perf Cap Reason "TDP".

That bios I linked for the 970FTW is BOSS btw....  I hit over 21k in Firestrike with it, with a 27,626 graphics score...that's the highest I've seen for 2 x 970s.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/5896870

kwkrnu72
Here, try this.  You are using a 970FTW, yes?  I wouldn't use this bios on anything else....

Thanx for your custom bios too, mate.
 
I tried it but unfortunately it was too demanding for my card. It started showing artifacts and crashed the graphics driver after a couple of minutes in heaven benchmark.
 
I came back to r0ach´s second, but thanx for sharing anyway. ;)

you can try this one. I increased the tdp and power limit by 25W.
2x6-pins are set to 90000 and 100000 still.
75+90+90=255W
75+100+100=275W
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B007JgCLgXQLWm1hM09kdGJSQVk/view?usp=sharing
 

I never did get r0ach's bios versions to work.  I made some improvements upon the 1.262v bios from the LTT forums.  Upped the voltage to 1.275v, improved the scaling in the voltage tables, moved the TDP and power limits up to 300 watts (105 from each 6 pin and 80 from the PCIe slot), disabled the boost state and set the TDP base clock to 1531.5 and memory to 3705.  Works well for my cards, but....I tailored it specifically for them.  Other than the voltage, which I wish would go higher.  = (  

It didn't allow me to push too much further, but it did help.  FS against 2 x 970s I'm now in 2nd (21193), FS Extreme against 2 x 970s I'm in 1st (11414), and I have yet to find 2 x 970s with a higher Valley score than 5555.  I just wish they could have run this well straight out of the box....wouldn't have been as much fun getting there, but....that kind of performance is definitely there.

chuckium
It really disappointed me to realize that my first evga graphics card ever is not properly calibrated in stock. I had always heard wonders about the superior quality of evga products, so I trusted them but just to find out all these problems.
 
I can´t remove this thinking from my head that evga never admitted the tdp issue so they can sell the ftw 2.0+ version of the graphics card, which basically is the same card as the ftw except for the ftw+ is slightly longer and therefore can dissipate more heat. But then again, these custom bioses we are sharing aren´t causing us any tdp or heat problems at all, and their tdp values are even higher than ftw+´s stock.
 
Fortunatelly we as costumers can bypass these issues ourselves. That´s the magic of an open platform like the pc.
 
Anyway, anybody tried DeathAngel74´s bios? What are the gains that would be spected out of it and would it be safe using it?
 
Kind regards.

That's essentially the same bios I started with.  1.262v is completely safe.  That's .006v higher than I could run mine on the stock bios.  At 1.262v I was seeing 1580 game stable, and 1590 to 1593ish firestrike stable...most of the time.  With 1.262v I would expect 27k firestrike graphics scores out of 2 x 970 FTWs.

I'm fairly certain that NVIDIA had specific restrictions they wanted placed on the GPUs, especially regarding the power limits, given that they were supposed to be "low power" and "efficient".  That's not excusing 170 / 187, which is just crazy low, but......I digress.

The FTW+ has a better power phase, and a higher TDP and power limits in the stock bios.

It's very close to the same thing I had linked originally.  If the power limits are still too low, or the base clock is too high let us know.  Either one of us can move those around a tad more.