AgniBrandt
Hey, just wanted to chime in and note that I'm having the same issue. I'm doing a cross-ship RMA with EVGA and should hopefully have the card in in a day or two. I'll post back once I get the new card (By the way, increasing fan speed isn't always enough. The Witcher 3 broke that fix for me.)

Yeah, fan fix failed me just now... I had it at 60% and still got a black screen crash. Although it has been running a LOT longer between crashes. At any rate, it's being RMAed as well but I don't get my replacement til next week.

Hey guys, just to tell you i just did a cross ship RMA and the card is working 100% no more black screen crash.
 
Now i need to see if they will refund when they receive my defect one.

Okay, got my own cross ship RMA replacement and it seems to have solved my issue! Card's running at about 80 degrees playing Witcher 3 on max settings (it wouldn't go that high before), and no black screens! I'll update again if the issue returns. By the way, using this post sped up the support process for me splendidly. Thanks to all those who've posted!

I had the same issues with Skyrim and Unigine on 970 SC ACX 2.0....  Black screen, looping sound and had to cold reboot my PC to get the screen to come back again.
I've RMA'd the card and should have a new one back within the next few days.
I get the feeling that the factory overclocks on these cards were too much for a certain batch of GPUs. The GPUs are probably perfectly fine when running at Nvidia reference speeds.

RMA process has been great so far though, very pleased with the super quick service 

I RMAed my card (for the third time, but first time in four months) and the problem has gone away, thus far no crashes in 40 minutes of Heaven benchmark on extreme tessellation. No need to artificially increase fan speed.
 
This card came with a newer BIOS version (84.04.36.00.70 compared to, I think, 84.04.32.00.70) and is not fluctuating in voltage or in clock speed when running Heaven benchmark anywhere near as frequently as the old card did. I'm not going to bother reinstalling the old card that I'm sending back and updating the BIOS to test this theory, but if you are thinking of doing an RMA I suggest you ask EVGA for a copy of the new BIOS and flash it to your card to see if it makes a difference before you pay to ship your card back to EVGA.

Just opened a support ticket today.  Been having similar issues with black screen/driver stopped responding and recovered while playing Witcher 3 and World of Warcraft.  Also Valley benchmark locks my computer up after awhile resulting in me having to hard reset.  Have read many posts that say it could be a PSU issue but since my last card AMD/ATI 5850 used 6 watts more then the 970 according to HWcompare.com I find it hard to believe that its the problem. My temps seem fine, hottest I have seen the card get is 75c which is a safe operating temp. The card also seems to have the latest bios 84.04.36.00.70. 
 
CPU - AMD Phenom 6 core 1055t 2.8ghz
Motherboard - ASUS M4A87TD-EVO
Memory - Crucial Ballistix Tactical 8GB (2 x 4GB) 1333
PSU - Thermaltake 850w TR2 RX-850 AP

secretboss
Just opened a support ticket today.  Been having similar issues with black screen/driver stopped responding and recovered while playing Witcher 3 and World of Warcraft.  Also Valley benchmark locks my computer up after awhile resulting in me having to hard reset.  Have read many posts that say it could be a PSU issue but since my last card AMD/ATI 5850 used 6 watts more then the 970 according to HWcompare.com I find it hard to believe that its the problem. My temps seem fine, hottest I have seen the card get is 75c which is a safe operating temp. The card also seems to have the latest bios 84.04.36.00.70. 
 
CPU - AMD Phenom 6 core 1055t 2.8ghz
Motherboard - ASUS M4A87TD-EVO
Memory - Crucial Ballistix Tactical 8GB (2 x 4GB) 1333
PSU - Thermaltake 850w TR2 RX-850 AP

I just got my 970 back from RMA and it ran Valley Benchmark for 2 hours straight without a hitch. Before that it would have crashed (black screen) after a minute or two. Definitely not the PSU, but something slightly wrong with a certain batch of these cards.

Hello fellow EVGA community! 
I might be new on the forums (and this is likely to be my only post, but it's important I make it because it could help others) I have been using EVGA products for quite a few years (along with Gigabyte), so when I personally encountered this problem I was a bit miffed but today I made my RMA claim on a EVGA GeForce GTX 970 4GB SC ACX 2.0
 
I was finally able to reproduce the dreaded *black screen of death reliably, it had happened occasionally before every now and then in FarCry 4 (But never CS:GO or DotA2) and WoW gave me a BSoD or two that resulted in minidumps that blamed NVIDIA drivers.  
 
*Black screen of death = both monitors go no input, sound loops or continues, requires hard reset, one attempt even made my UEFI go to default settings because it ****ed with CMOS/POST apparently, fun times, MSI Gaming 5 Z97/i5 4670K (no overclocking ever)
 
I gotta admit I didn't run any of the benchmarks on my card, or tried to OC, and I thought I was fine because you know, it's an EVGA product, but in Witcher 3 I came to a point I couldn't progress anymore because this would happen at the same place roughly every single time, that is, until I downclocked the card using EVGA Precision today.
 
So apparently it can't run the default shipped stock settings on the card, and that's a RMA claim right there.
 
You can download a .rar with my witcher 3 saves , you can nab it and try (extract to Documents\The Witcher 3\gamesaves\, ver 1.06) , it's a part of the main quest, if you can kill the foglets and progress the quest your card may be fine, my card couldn't do it until I severely underclocked my card.
 
If I remember I'll update this thread on my own RMA and what became of it.
 
EDIT: I think new users can't posts links, but the saves are at ht.tps://aftonpravdan.nu/inet/w3s .rar (Remove the dot and space, sorry, mods/community feel free to verify if makes anyone feel safer)

Is there any chance EVGA would let me give them my payment information and cross ship a new GPU without charging me?  But have the charge looming if they don't get my GPU in return?  Like if within "x" amount of time if they don't get my card back they will charge me?
 
I just bought my 970 a little over a month ago and I am having these black screen issues (even after exchanging the card for a new one at Microcenter a few weeks after getting it), but I don't have enough money for them to charge me the price of an entire other GPU during the RMA process... And I don't have another GPU to use in the interim for the weeks the back and forth would take to get the replacement?
 
I understand their need to protect themselves with the charge so people don't get the RMA replacement for free and then send nothing back... But don't they have some customer loyalty kind of thing?  Can't they look in my account and see I have thousands of dollars in EVGA parts registered over the years and I am a loyal customer and have no interest in stealing?
 
Thanks

squeets
Is there any chance EVGA would let me give them my payment information and cross ship a new GPU without charging me?  But have the charge looming if they don't get my GPU in return?  Like if within "x" amount of time if they don't get my card back they will charge me?
 
I just bought my 970 a little over a month ago and I am having these black screen issues (even after exchanging the card for a new one at Microcenter a few weeks after getting it), but I don't have enough money for them to charge me the price of an entire other GPU during the RMA process... And I don't have another GPU to use in the interim for the weeks the back and forth would take to get the replacement?
 
I understand their need to protect themselves with the charge so people don't get the RMA replacement for free and then send nothing back... But don't they have some customer loyalty kind of thing?  Can't they look in my account and see I have thousands of dollars in EVGA parts registered over the years and I am a loyal customer and have no interest in stealing?
 
Thanks

Regardless of whether they hold on to the charge or actually charge you, the money will be set aside by the creditor, just for pinging the transaction. Only difference is a pending charge drops off after about a week or so.
 
 
Anyway, moving on..
 
I just wanted to stop by and mention that the bout of black screens everyone is experiencing may actually be driver related. I was experiencing constant display driver crashes (black screen on several titles, just like everybody else). A temporary fix that seemed to work well with my rig was limiting Witcher 3 gameplay to 30FPS; since it dropped the workload of the GPU by ~40%, I came to the assumption that my card was faulty..
 
Well, just this past weekend, I decided to give Windows 10 a go(I learned that M$ will be converting technical preview versions of the OS into a retail copy of Pro when the preview expires). Got most of my programs and games loaded to the OS and thought to give Witcher 3 a try again..
Wouldnt you know it, the game has been nothing but butter smooth ever since, without crashes! I've logged about 12 hours this weekend(mainly screwing around, trying to replicate a display crash), and the game plays contently at the 60FPS lock (GPU pegged at 99% util); keep in mind, under Windows 7, the game would routinely crash five minutes in if the card sustained full utilization.
 
*Knocks on wood*
From my end, at least, the black screen issue appears to just be driver related(possibly too many past drivers overlapping each other). I'll post a follow up if I end up running into issues again