Ahha, I hadn't seen that yet. The whole thing has been way overblown, like I said, I hadn't even heard of it until reading about it here, and I read a lot of other gaming chans/forums, which is odd. I had to actually go try and recreate the problem, I hadn't seen any issues with my 970s, either in sli or just running a single card. I waited until day 15 of my RMA (the last day) to even replace them, as it seemed like a bit of a PITA to even bother with. The only reason I went ahead was that all the complaining about it has driven the resale speed and price down. That and due to the exchange rate and cost of the cards going way up since I bought them, and nVidia covering the replacement, not original price, I said wth.
The lawsuit that's been launched against nVidia is a bit overboard as well. If they are guilty, where are the lawsuits vs piles of games that have been sold as pre-orders that don't live up to their own statements when released, right? On the other hand maybe some punishment will keep companies more accurate in describing their products pre release. I'm certainly not switching back to AMD over it, not until they make something that's either cheaper and equal or better at the same cost.
Most gamers I know in the games I play don't even have or need a 1440p or 4k monitor anyway, which is where the problems start with 970 usually. Having bought one of each from the same place I bought my video cards, they took my 970 cards back no questions asked, but still, even with these monitors, the 2 best gaming Gsync out there (for now) IMO, I still never noticed any performance drops that made me go searching google for this issue. Like I said, I only heard it here first, and I think single 970 users in those few games that caused issues saw them more easily, as those "bigger" games have decent SLI profiles, and probably that caused some kind of difference in the fps on screen to be not as noticeably bad.
I still wouldn't hesitate to tell anyone the 970 was and is a good card for the $, especially if gaming in 1080p, and if there is no plan on reselling it in a year when the next big thing comes along.