Hello, I've never posted on these forums before, and I'm not an expert on the particulars of PC building. I consider myself an average PC builder at best, though I've never had any issues with my build or GPU until I upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10 last year.
 
The issue I'm having is that intermittently while gaming (any game it seems) my monitor will randomly crash to a black screen and not recover, forcing me to hard boot my machine. Some games it almost never happens, others I may see 5-20 minutes of game-play before the crash occurs. I've tried clean booting, clean installs of drivers, rolling back to previous drivers, changing slots, and nothing seems to make a difference. My temps are always in the green and I run everything at factory clock speeds.
 
What more can I do to see if the card is actually the issue or not? I'm at my wits end.
 
A very brief overview of my specs:
 
Asus Maximus VI Hero
Intel Core i7-4770k @ 3.5 GHz
Corsair h100i cooler
GTX 980 FTW ACX 2.0
16 GB Ram @ 1333 MHz
Corsair HX 1050 PSU
 
Thanks in advance.
 
 
 
 

Are you using a displayport cable? If yes, is it vesa certified? When crashing to the black screen do the fans on your gpu go to 100%?

I'm currently using a typical HDMI cable from my monitor to the GPU. And no, when crashing the fan speed stays the same.

Does the issue occur over dvi & displayport? How old is your psu? Does underclocking the card -500 on both the core & memory prevent the black screen from occurring?
 
Note: Use msi afterburner for the underclocking.

We have been over this 1000 times. There is no magic solution to make it work at advertised FTW clocks. Early 980 FTW's have issues. RMA the card.
If you like I can share a BIOS that locks the card at 1.137v and sets the clocks to stock reference. It will not crash anymore but you'll lose factory OC and the whole point of buying the FTW edition in the first place.
 
Stable clock for the early 980 FTW's is 1327Mhz Core / 4001Mhz Memory @1.137v. Anything above that on core or voltage and it will crash with black screen sooner or later.
 
Edit:
BIOS
After flashing the BIOS set +150Mhz Core and +500Mhz Memory in MSI Afterburner. You should be good to go.
 

Sajin
Does the issue occur over dvi & displayport? How old is your psu? Does underclocking the card -500 on both the core & memory prevent the black screen from occurring?
 
Note: Use msi afterburner for the underclocking.

The issue still occurs over both dvi and displayport after having tested both today, and the psu is just shy of 3 years old. Thus far after underclocking the card by -500 on both the core and memory the crash has yet to occur. I'm testing Shadow of Mordor currently, and before I was lucky to get 10 minutes of game time whereas I've yet to crash after an hour or two.
 

Samsander
We have been over this 1000 times. There is no magic solution to make it work at advertised FTW clocks. Early 980 FTW's have issues. RMA the card.
If you like I can share a BIOS that locks the card at 1.137v and sets the clocks to stock reference. It will not crash anymore but you'll lose factory OC and the whole point of buying the FTW edition in the first place.
 
Stable clock for the early 980 FTW's is 1327Mhz Core / 4001Mhz Memory @1.137v. Anything above that on core or voltage and it will crash with black screen sooner or later.
 
Edit:
 
After flashing the BIOS set +150Mhz Core and +500Mhz Memory in MSI Afterburner. You should be good to go.
 

Is this a common issue? Would you suggest I flash the BIOS or simply RMA the card?

Your card is advertised to be able to run 1380 on the core & 3505 on the memory. Can your card run that without a problem? If no, I'd suggest rma'ing the card.

Reithas
 
Is this a common issue? Would you suggest I flash the BIOS or simply RMA the card?

Yes, it's a common issue with this model. If you can, RMA it. Or better yet get a replacement 980 SC card instead, the SC card does not have all the FTW problems. Or even better get it replaced with something newer like 1070.
 
There was a huge thread about this issue when those cards first released. Thread is gone now for some reason. Anyway, they tried fixing this with BIOS updates, but nothing was fixed. People kept RMAing their cards and getting replacements with same issue. So most just paid extra and upgraded to 980TI.
 
Edit: It's not gone after all, here is that thread:
https://forums.evga.com/So-GTX-980-FTW-are-very-bad-cards-m2346232.aspx
 

Sajin
Your card is advertised to be able to run 1380 on the core & 3505 on the memory. Can your card run that without a problem? If no, I'd suggest rma'ing the card.

Sorry to ask, how can I check the specific numbers for the core and memory? Can I do that with Afterburner? The gauge doesn't show me the precise numbers and I wish to be sure before I RMA the card.

Reithas

Sajin
Your card is advertised to be able to run 1380 on the core & 3505 on the memory. Can your card run that without a problem? If no, I'd suggest rma'ing the card.

Sorry to ask, how can I check the specific numbers for the core and memory? Can I do that with Afterburner? The gauge doesn't show me the precise numbers and I wish to be sure before I RMA the card.

Yes, you can do it with afterburner. Simply click on the hardware monitor graph to see what the card is/was running at.