VGAMASTER198
The FTW are the least reliable in the EVGA range :/

think its more to that they take their higher tier cards and put 6pin on them instead of letting us have 8pin to have all the power we want even if the card wont ever need it it would stabalize stockspeeds but even OC instead of checking GPUZ and see that i hitting power target constant even though i put power target to 124% its powerlimit barely hits 99% and still hitting the power limiter

stalinx20

wickedwayne

djmorgan
Anybody that has these crashes, they won't occur without warning and especially with windows 7 you will find an 'item' in the event viewer explaining why the issue came about.
 
David

Holy crap! Are You some kind of genius? Quick everyone check Your event viewer! So much discussion over this problem in several threads and all we had to do was check the event viewer! Damn, how didn't someone think of that before! 
 
I am sorry i have enough of this crap. The card has issues and i will have my 980Ti by next week. To everyone who has this issues either return it or Step Up if You can, if not, RMA it or sell it and get a better model from EVGA or a card from another vendor. By the time there is something done about this issue (if at all), pascal will probably be out and no one cares anymore anyway.
 
Honestly save yourselves some headache and jump ship. 
 
Wayne of House Wicked, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
 

...The way i see it if they want to get any spark going, they should call their credit card company, and have them dish it out with EVGA.

Yep

EVGATech_DaveB
Hello again all.
I have received several PMs with further testing and specs, this has been helpful, we are currently working towards a solution.
 
Stalinx20, I can see where you are going with the PCIE Power booster, however that would not help in this situation.  That was actually made back in the X58 era before there was supplemental power on all the boards for PCIE, when the 480s first launched and we started seeing 24pin connectors fused to the motherboards.  Now it is not needed most of the time, every once and a while I have seen the used, it is just older stock that we are selling incase someone needs it.  Honestly, not a bad idea though.
 
To all who have PM'd me, I will be following up shortly.  I have a ****BETA**** BIOS I will send out to a few and see how it works.  Our engineers so far has gotten some headway with this, and I would like to see it tried by some of you who have the issue.

That is good news. I will gladly test the beta BIOS.
Thank you. I replied to your PM with my email.

EVGATech_DaveB
Hello again all.
I have received several PMs with further testing and specs, this has been helpful, we are currently working towards a solution.
 
Stalinx20, I can see where you are going with the PCIE Power booster, however that would not help in this situation.  That was actually made back in the X58 era before there was supplemental power on all the boards for PCIE, when the 480s first launched and we started seeing 24pin connectors fused to the motherboards.  Now it is not needed most of the time, every once and a while I have seen the used, it is just older stock that we are selling incase someone needs it.  Honestly, not a bad idea though.
 
To all who have PM'd me, I will be following up shortly.  I have a ****BETA**** BIOS I will send out to a few and see how it works.  Our engineers so far has gotten some headway with this, and I would like to see it tried by some of you who have the issue.

just to ask, even though the 980 Hydro Copper cards are not as close to be as popular in question and dunno how many cards in total has been in for RMA seeing i been having 2 cards already with drivers issues while EVGA support in EU cant find any problems with those cards that has been sent in still on any driver from 350.xx (GTA5 ready) and up til the newest i get blackscreen flash crash to desktop with driver restore now im sitting on 347.88 and it might be fine havent had any crashes but i cant touch any of the dials in PrescionX either higher the power limit or doing a minor OC to the core is crashing the driver while gaming but its fine as any doing benchmarks in 3Dmark, Heaven and Valley doesnt not crash the driver....

EVGATech_DaveB
Hello again all.
I have received several PMs with further testing and specs, this has been helpful, we are currently working towards a solution.
 
Stalinx20, I can see where you are going with the PCIE Power booster, however that would not help in this situation.  That was actually made back in the X58 era before there was supplemental power on all the boards for PCIE, when the 480s first launched and we started seeing 24pin connectors fused to the motherboards.  Now it is not needed most of the time, every once and a while I have seen the used, it is just older stock that we are selling incase someone needs it.  Honestly, not a bad idea though.
 
To all who have PM'd me, I will be following up shortly.  I have a ****BETA**** BIOS I will send out to a few and see how it works.  Our engineers so far has gotten some headway with this, and I would like to see it tried by some of you who have the issue.

OK, it didn't take me to long to test the BETA BIOS. So you can understand from this I don't have good news.
Ran 3DMark Skydiver in a loop. It didn't even had a chance to loop. Crashed with black screen in seconds.
 
The changes I'm seeing in this BIOS are not the changes that are going to solve the problem.
*The TDP Clock was dropped from 1278.5Mhz to 1253Mhz
*The Boost Clock was dropped from 1380Mhz to 1354.5Mhz
*The 0dB 0rpm fan speed is no more. It is now set to 580rpm (10%)
 
We already know that downclocking the card works. From what I see here the engineers just downclocked the card by 25.5Mhz
As many already said here that to achieve stability the downclock needs to be much more aggressive. In most cases downclocking the card by 101Mhz and bringing it to a BOOST clock of 1278.5Mhz makes it stable.
 
This is not the solution we are looking for. Downclocking we can do without engineers.

Samsander

EVGATech_DaveB
Hello again all.
I have received several PMs with further testing and specs, this has been helpful, we are currently working towards a solution.
 
Stalinx20, I can see where you are going with the PCIE Power booster, however that would not help in this situation.  That was actually made back in the X58 era before there was supplemental power on all the boards for PCIE, when the 480s first launched and we started seeing 24pin connectors fused to the motherboards.  Now it is not needed most of the time, every once and a while I have seen the used, it is just older stock that we are selling incase someone needs it.  Honestly, not a bad idea though.
 
To all who have PM'd me, I will be following up shortly.  I have a ****BETA**** BIOS I will send out to a few and see how it works.  Our engineers so far has gotten some headway with this, and I would like to see it tried by some of you who have the issue.

OK, it didn't take me to long to test the BETA BIOS. So you can understand from this I don't have good news.
Ran 3DMark Skydiver in a loop. It didn't even had a chance to loop. Crashed with black screen in seconds.
 
The changes I'm seeing in this BIOS are not the changes that are going to solve the problem.
*The TDP Clock was dropped from 1278.5Mhz to 1253Mhz
*The Boost Clock was dropped from 1380Mhz to 1354.5Mhz
*The 0dB 0rpm fan speed is no more. It is now set to 580rpm (10%)
 
We already know that downclocking the card works. From what I see here the engineers just downclocked the card by 25.5Mhz
As many already said here that to achieve stability the downclock needs to be much more aggressive. I most cases downclocking the card by 101Mhz and bringing it to a BOOST clock of 1278.5Mhz makes it stable.
 
This is not the solution we are looking for. Downclocking we can do without engineers.

Downclocking should also not be the answer to the problem. The card is sold as capable of hitting certain boost and base clocks, if you downclock it, it's not a "FTW" anymore which is what you paid for in the first place.

I will be passing this information back to the engineers, a straight downclock should not be the fix, I agree completely there.  I will keep on this until we have a solution.  I apologize for the situation and that the fix is taking longer than hoped.

An interesting update, from thread ... ok, so it wont let me post a hyper link, so the thread title is Interesting 980 FTW/SC stability find
 
I have a 980ftw, was crashing fairly constantly, had to underclock like many in the thread have mentioned, was still crashing, rolled back drivers, was still crashing.  I then stumbled over the above thread.
 
I went into NVidia control panel, manage 3d settings, turned dsr on.
 
Reverted to stock settings on my 980ftw, loaded up swtor, changed the resolution to full screen 2560x1440, maxed everything, and played for 90 minutes with no crashes.
 
Switched to TSW, resolution to 2560x1440, maxed everything, and played for almost 2 hours, no crashes.
 
Switched to ETS2, resolution to 2560x1440, maxed everything, did 3 cargo runs, no crashes.
 
I hope this will help others who have been having the issue, and while I am still waiting for my step up, I am cautiously happy with my 980ftw now
 
tl/dr ... set option in ncp, reset to factory defaults in precision, loaded game, changed resolution, played, ?, profit

My overclocked reference evga gtx 980, not a FTW edition, also has this issue with newer nvidia drivers. Got frequent TDR crashes in games and black-screen freezes occasionally.

My screen would go black in the witcher 3, sometimes white(rare), and I would have to manually restart the computer as is being described in this thread with the newer drivers 352.86 or 353.06. I was forced to roll back to 350.12 to get some stability back. Older drivers still cause TDR crashes now and then. I literally can't use these newer nvidia drivers though due to how unstable they are with TDR crashes and blackscreen locks.

Not just the FTW edition is affected by this problem. The specific model I got is EVGA 04G-P4-2980-KR on newegg, so basically just the evga 980 basic reference model. It is pretty stable in older drivers, but on newer drivers you literally can't play anything due to either TDR crashes or sometimes blackscreens that lock the system where it needs to be restarted manually. I will keep my eyes glued to this thread as I have the exact same issues as described from people with the FTW cards.

The issues I'm getting seem almost identical to what people are getting with these FTW edition cards. Overclocked reference 980 needs help as well. My card is stable at 1495/3950 on older drivers. Can run 10 passes of heaven benchmark and 10 passes of valley benchmark without a problem consecutively, in a row, no issues. On these newer drivers though forget it, I tried lowering clocks by 100mhz on core and memory and STILL got TDR's and blackscreen locks with these newer nvidia drivers.

I don't know what causes this issue, maybe a power management issue is my guess, but I've tried literally everything other than messing with the bios itself and nothing works. People are having similar issues on the nvidia forums with these newer drivers as well. The same issues that are being reported here and pretty much all over the nvidia forums and the guru forums as well with these newer nvidia drivers.
 
Monitor: ASUS VS248 1920x1080 
Windows 7 64bit sp1 
MOBO: ASUS P8P67 DELUXE rev3.0 / bios 3602 
Intel i7-2600k @ 4.4ghz 
G.skill 8GB DDR3 2133 
EVGA Gtx 980 Bios: 84.04.1F.00.80 (samsung vram)
Samsung 830 250GB SSD Firmware: CXM03B1Q 
PSU: Antec 850w gold certified 
Keyboard: Logitech G110 
Audio/sound: Logitech G35 7.1 headset 
Mouse: Razer Deathadder 2013 edition
------Essential background programs-----
MSI afterburner 4.1.1
Rivatuner Statistics server v6.3.0.7688
Samsung magician
Razer synapse 2.0 v1.18
Logitech gaming software v8.58.183

stalinx20

wickedwayne

wickedwayne
Holy crap! Are You some kind of genius? Quick everyone check Your event viewer! So much discussion over this problem in several threads and all we had to do was check the event viewer! Damn, how didn't someone think of that before! 
 
I am sorry i have enough of this crap. The card has issues and i will have my 980Ti by next week. To everyone who has this issues either return it or Step Up if You can, if not, RMA it or sell it and get a better model from EVGA or a card from another vendor. By the time there is something done about this issue (if at all), pascal will probably be out and no one cares anymore anyway.
 
Honestly save yourselves some headache and jump ship. 
 
Wayne of House Wicked, First of His Name, King of the Andals and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.

This was a shameful display of my behavior towards other members of this community. I tend to go off the rails and get overzealous fast recently and i apologize. Any explanation i could give wouldn't excuse this so this is all i can say.
 
To djMorgan and to everyone else i offended, i am sorry. I will refrain from doing this again in the future.  

It's all good Wayne, I doubt if anyone really took anything personal by it. I was speaking on behalf with everyone that has a problem with the 980ftw, when I wrote my message. Surely those that could get the step-up like you did would have done so by now. Honestly I'm just glad the Techs are now taking action to get these cards fixed. Surely when they do they'll be a beast of a card.

Not just 980ftw, my reference 980 oc with boost 1495/3950 has the exact same issue as you guys on these newer 352.86 and 353.06 nvidia drivers. If I roll back to 347.88 or 350.12 I can run 10 passes of heaven benchmark and 10 passes of valley benchmark without an issue all in a row. 

Forget it on these newer drivers though. Even lowering the core and memory clocks by 100mhz doesn't even have an affect on it. TDR and blackscreen crashes everywhere in numerous games or benchmarks with nvidias newer drivers.

My card: EVGA Gtx 980 Bios: 84.04.1F.00.80 (samsung vram)

Red46

Shelledfade
 
Not just 980ftw, my reference 980 oc 1495/3950 has the exact same issue as you guys on these newer 352.86 and 353.06 nvidia drivers. If I roll back to 347.88 or 350.12 I can run 10 passes of heaven benchmark and 10 passes of valley benchmark without an issue all in a row. 

Forget it on these newer drivers though. Even lowering the core and memory clocks by 100mhz doesn't even have an affect on it. TDR and blackscreen crashes everywhere in numerous games or benchmarks.

I think the issue you are experiencing is different from ours then. Our cards are crashing regardless of the driver version unless they're downclocked.

I'm open to the possibility that it might be a slightly different problem than you FTW edition guys, but having the same exact problems as you guys with these newer drivers with OC reference 980, so its worth reporting at any rate.

EVGATech_DaveB
 
@FTW members with the issue
Out of curiosity, does enabling KBoost also stabilize the issue?

No. It will still crash with Black screen. K-Boost just locks the core clock at BOOST (P0 state) speed.
I wrote about this here: http://forums.evga.com/FindPost/2351842

EVGATech_DaveB
Shelledfade,
can you try enabling DSR and run your games at a minimum of 2560x1440, see if that help.  Honestly it does sound like you have a different issue, or possibly an issue with your card. 
 
@FTW members with the issue
Out of curiosity, does enabling KBoost also stabilize the issue?

I can tell you for sure it didn't help whatsoever in the witcher 3 with 352.86 or 353.06 at 2560x1440 or 2880x1620 as I already tried that a while ago, same with gta 5. PrecisionX k-boost didn't effect it at all either. 

There is seriously something wrong with nvidia's new drivers, either that or my cards current bios does not like whatever these newer nvidia drivers are changing from the previous drivers. The official nvidia forums are literally on fire right now when the amount of people reporting problems with these new drivers regarding TDR crashes and black screen crashes that require manual reboot.

I also tried using display driver uninstaller in safe mode, fullscreen, borderless windowed...and just a plethora of small tweaks that would take too long to type. Nothing worked.

The issue may be different than FTW cards but I don't think there is anything physically wrong with my reference 980 as 347.88 and 350.12 seems fairly stable to me. These newer drivers though are literally unusable.

Shelledfade

EVGATech_DaveB
Shelledfade,
can you try enabling DSR and run your games at a minimum of 2560x1440, see if that help.  Honestly it does sound like you have a different issue, or possibly an issue with your card. 
 
@FTW members with the issue
Out of curiosity, does enabling KBoost also stabilize the issue?

I can tell you for sure it didn't help whatsoever in the witcher 3 with 352.86 or 353.06 at 2560x1440 or 2880x1620 as I already tried that a while ago, same with gta 5. PrecisionX k-boost didn't effect it at all either. 

There is seriously something wrong with nvidia's new drivers, either that or my cards current bios does not like whatever these newer nvidia drivers are changing from the previous drivers. The official nvidia forums are literally on fire right now when the amount of people reporting problems with these new drivers regarding TDR crashes and black screen crashes that require manual reboot.

I also tried using display driver uninstaller in safe mode, fullscreen, borderless windowed...and just a plethora of small tweaks that would take too long to type. Nothing worked.

The issue may be different than FTW cards but I don't think there is anything physically wrong with my reference 980 as 347.88 and 350.12 seems fairly stable to me. These newer drivers though are literally unusable.

Yes, we know by now that the last 2 or 3 drivers are problematic. But we are crashing here with 347.88 and 350.12 at factory clocks. And recovery (TDR) is not even kicking in. It's straight to Black Screen BSOD (116) with the FTW.
 
For you I recommend not to overclock to high and for now stay with 347.88 or 350.12 drivers until nvidia releases a new driver. Then try and see how it goes.

I didn’t read the whole thread, but I got my GTX 980 FTW since 2 months now and it’s working like a charm. No Blue screens, no freezes, no game crashes, no nothing *knocks on wood* Just my 2 cents. To all the others, good luck, hopefully there will be a working solution for you guys.