Finally got my new EVGA GTX 970 FTW along with the backplate I got from their promotion installed in my system today.
Got the card installed, and installed the newer Nvidia 344.75 drivers. So far so good.
The ASIC quality on the card is 73.4%. ASIC on the GTX 770 SSC card I took out was a little better, at 82.1%. But really I don't mess with overclocking the video card, they are already overclocked some so I spend my overclocking efforts on my system rather than the video card.
Card is running around 36c at idle desktop with default settings ( fans not spinning).
First thing I did was run 3D Mark 11. First I opened up Precision 4.2.1 and set it to use the included software fan curve for running 3D Mark 11.
My previous score with the GTX 770 was 10,934.
With the new GTX 970 FTW, my first score came out at 12,761.
Highest temp I saw the GPU get was 61c, and that was only briefly.
It is boosting to 1404 MHz, at 1.205V.
So initially at least it would seem my temps will be fine.
One thing I noticed with this card and drivers, is apparently I don't have to use the force-enable executable to enable PCIe 3.0 for the vid card, like I had to do previously with the 770, on my X-79 Dark board. Not sure if that is a card thing or a driver thing, but nonetheless nice not to have to do it. GPUz showing it was already running at 3.0
Anyway that is my initial experience with the new card installed, hopefully can get some gaming time in little later on and see what it does for me in that department. Really like the backplate I got from the EVGA promotion, it is sweet.