aleki
 
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.

I was asking if there was a way to avoid the charge all together unless they didn't get the card back.  Like have the payment info on file and ready to go in the event they don't get the card back and charge me only if they don't get it.
 
Or even just a smaller earnest charge in general.
 
I just ask because I just don't have the money to do their cross ship... Student loans, bills, etc... I can't afford to pay the full price of a second 970 at this time, even if it is only temporary.  While at the same time I have no spare GPU to use in place of the 970 with the standard option and a lot of my work in on the computer, so I can't just not have a computer for several weeks.

I am currently getting issues now with project cars, seems one problem after another with this 970.
 
Stock clocks, voltages.  The game is every so often going to blank screen with sound still going.  Its only ever doing it in menus etc. not when card at full stress.
 
I alt-tab to desktop, kill game and relaunch to carry on, I cannot switch back to game after alt tabbing it has to be killed.
 
I wish now I did the step-up I started early this year.

Hmmm... this sounds exactly like the issues I have playing Skyrim at stock (factory-overclocked) speeds on my brand-new GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 playing Skyrim - black screen crash requiring hard shutdown.  Longest I played without a crash at stock speeds was 13 mins.  Used Precision to clock it -114 mhz and Skyrim hasn't crashed since.  This is a brand-new system I built, running 353.38.
 
I had no trouble with anything else though - it even ran through the 3DMark primary tests with an "accidental" .5 ghz CPU overclock at factory overclocked speeds.  Ran the Arkham Knight benchmark twice with everything set to the max (1080i res, though); no crash.  Maybe tonight I'll try actually playing the game at stock speeds....
 
Maybe I'll give EVGA one shot at the RMA apple.... they didn't answer me as to what I'm supposed to do with the backplate, though.

MightionNY
Hmmm... this sounds exactly like the issues I have playing Skyrim at stock (factory-overclocked) speeds on my brand-new GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0 playing Skyrim - black screen crash requiring hard shutdown.  Longest I played without a crash at stock speeds was 13 mins.  Used Precision to clock it -114 mhz and Skyrim hasn't crashed since.  This is a brand-new system I built, running 353.38.
 
I had no trouble with anything else though - it even ran through the 3DMark primary tests with an "accidental" .5 ghz CPU overclock at factory overclocked speeds.  Ran the Arkham Knight benchmark twice with everything set to the max (1080i res, though); no crash.  Maybe tonight I'll try actually playing the game at stock speeds....
 
Maybe I'll give EVGA one shot at the RMA apple.... they didn't answer me as to what I'm supposed to do with the backplate, though.

I'd definitely get it RMA'd. Since I had mine replaced, it's been working flawlessly.

I too have this issue.  Doesn't matter which video port, seems like an RMA is the only way.  I had such high hopes, ran the 760 SC 4GB without a hitch for over a year, decided to upgrade, now this.  

aleki
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

Well, looks like I'm eating my words.. Have been having some pretty consistent crashes for almost two weeks, so looks like an RMA is in order. Sucks.. such a nice card when it works :(
 
PS: Tried all hotfixes w/ clean install

I just want to add my voice here - I have a EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0....I am also having black screen crashes that lead to an immediate hard reset of my PC in the witcher 3, rocket league, and occasionally the total war games. 
 
Unfortunately the usual symptom here is an immediate power cut & reboot, not even leaving a minidump file for me to check out. In witcher 3 it usually occurs on-loading of the actual save game and in rocket league it usually occurs when loading the main menu. 
 
One short term fix I have figured out is underclocking the card in PrecisionX - usually this is able to stave off any hard resets for a while. (I'm using -418mhz on gpu clock and -201mhz on mem clock but haven't really tried to 'optimize' much). 
 
I have now RMA'd my card two times. What is weird is that the RMA seemed to fix issues for a few weeks, only for them to return in full force now. I may be trying out another (3rd) RMA after I try swapping out the PSU. 

wrcromartie
I just want to add my voice here - I have a EVGA GTX 970 SC ACX 2.0....I am also having black screen crashes that lead to an immediate hard reset of my PC in the witcher 3, rocket league, and occasionally the total war games. 
 
Unfortunately the usual symptom here is an immediate power cut & reboot, not even leaving a minidump file for me to check out. In witcher 3 it usually occurs on-loading of the actual save game and in rocket league it usually occurs when loading the main menu. 
 
One short term fix I have figured out is underclocking the card in PrecisionX - usually this is able to stave off any hard resets for a while. (I'm using -418mhz on gpu clock and -201mhz on mem clock but haven't really tried to 'optimize' much). 
 
I have now RMA'd my card two times. What is weird is that the RMA seemed to fix issues for a few weeks, only for them to return in full force now. I may be trying out another (3rd) RMA after I try swapping out the PSU. 

Personally, it sounds like your issue is due to a misbehaving PSU. Typically, any sort of hardware crash gets logged in event viewer, so long as the OS has access to the Storage, and CPU. A hard cycle typically indicates Immediate instability to a critical component; which could either be poor power delivery by the Motherboard, or poor output from PSU. 
GPU issues manifest themselves in display driver errors and black screens; which are both logged in event viewer. Others are artifacts on screen(VRAM), or anomalies affecting the display.
RAM and CPU issues can manifest in Blue Screen of Death, hardlock/screen freeze, or looping audio
Storage failures are eerie. Usually the system will function, up until it has to call on an integral file not preloaded to RAM; followed by a hard-crash.
 
What I've noticed with newer nVidia architecture, is that doesnt apply a linear load to the PSU; perhaps new cards are powerful enough where they dont float at high utilization like my previous cards.. Regardless, this can stress a tightly dialed system, since power delivery will shift the output of a PSU undergoing varying workloads..
 
Anyway, if you dont mind my asking, what are you using for a PSU?

Not sure how old this post is but I have to get this out there.
Random black screen crashes, temps are at 70-75c (mainly 70c) under load.

I finally figured it out, even though the temps are good I downloaded Evga Precision and set the fan curve to 70 (you could do lower im sure)... keep the card at 70c and you will not crash trust me.
No idea why this happening as I can game all day long with the card around 70c but when playing bf4 and it spikes sometimes to 75c it will randomly just cut out and go black. This will happen after a spike or climb to 75c, then coming back down to 70c

If this makes sense, the card will sound a bit loud. I like it, horsepower. haha, but seriously stressing doesn't work its only some games and this issue fixed it for me.

Just throwing in my experience here. I had this issue with my GTX 970 SC for months, tried to resolve it by underclocking, changing settings in games etc. It seemed that certain settings or specific effects in games seemed to cause it to happen (like whenever an objective was captured in Heroes of the Storm, or a very specific monster in Dragon Age: Inquisition). I got an RMA for my card (since I saw threads like this) perhaps back in May. Pulled out my old card, put in the RMA card and.... got the black screen shortly thereafter with the new card. So I thought, well, let's just try out SLI now that I have two cards. I was so enamored with the performance boost that I just decided to keep the second card, figuring that since my RMA'ed card was doing it too, it wasn't a hardware issue and I'd figure out a resolution at some point.
 
It had stopped for a while, but is now doing it in Final Fantasy 14 pretty reliably when I run it in DirectX 11, but not in DirectX 9. And it doesn't do it at all in the Witcher 3, which I have set to all Ultra, and runs both my SLI'ed cards at 90% the whole time. For me it doesn't seem like the amount the cards is being worked has anything to do with whether or not it freezes. I downloaded Sattelite Reign, a little top down indie game, and it froze. My experience seems to be, as I said, that certain effects (in my experience it seems like lighting or particle effects) cause it to happen. This would make sense why DirectX 9 would not have the issue with DirectX 11 would, since 11 allows for a lot more lighting effects.
 
I'd try the 70% fan solution, but that just doesn't seem sustainable, as it makes my computer sound like a jet engine, and it seems like a more properly functioning auto-fan should do the same thing more effectively. I've tried underclocking my cards to stock speeds nad it does help, but not 100%. Considering EVERY thread I see about this issue, seems to be with this particular card (GTX 970 SC), it seems like just a really significant faulty run that is really common. I'd RMA them again, but my experience with my first RMA didn't go so well. I would swap these cards out for stock non-OC cards in a minute, since they seem much more stable... do you think EVGA would do that for me if I told them my situation?