I've been having an issue lately with my 970. At completely random times my display blacks out for anywhere from 1-3 seconds and comes back. Sound and gameplay continue normally. It usually occurs in gaming but even happens sometimes while browsing the web or doing other mundane tasks and often goes for hours without happening before hitting a spurt where it can happen 5 times in 3 minutes, very random it seems. The flicker is pretty much identical to what happens when installing new drivers so I'm leaning towards a driver issue, especially considering that I didn't have the problem for the first few months I had the card installed. Naturally I've tried clean driver installs, both with the Nvidia application and using DDU to wipe the drivers clean, using considerably older drivers from back before I remember having the problem, and several options settings in the Nvidia control panel that I saw on some forums but nothing has worked. Has anyone else experienced this or have any suggestions?
This sounds like the nvlddmkm error... Check your event logs>custom views>admin events for any display errors. If you do see these there is a good chance that the card has gone faulty, and you may want to contact your card manufacturer. There are other reasons for the error such as faulty mobo or power. Best way to check is to use a known working card and putting it into the same conditions. Other possible causes: https://forums.geforce.com/default/...-tdr-errors-display-driver-nvlddmkm-stopped-/ https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/833644/geforce-drivers/to-people-with-tdr/
To be honest, the best place to look for help is the nvidia forums themselves because they have people who are paid to know how to fix this kind of issue. To me it sounds like either an issue with the drivers or something with the cable itself. Worst comes to worst you probably have to get it replaced but that is under warranty so you should be covered.
So...derp...it was the cable. It was such an obvious thing but I was hell bent on it being something else. I can say that I've never had a cable fail with symptoms like that before though. Still feel like a dumbass haha.