Basically I'm one of the douchebags that purchased a gtx 970 near release.. I called newegg just to inquire what their policy on the whole issue is and they ended up telling me they would accept a return and give store credit for my GPU if I paid a $55 restocking fee. I paid $400 USD (including tax/shipping) for the gigabyte g1 version with the backplate.. i don't game as much tbh... But I want to switch to linux soon and move to open source. Any advice like return this wait for 290x prices to drop or wait for 390x which will presumably hold better linux drivers?
Btw I've got an Antec 1200 PSU
p67 motherboard (only 16 lanes pcie 2.0) with overclocked 2600k i7
thanks
ok i don't get it
i don't game as much tbh.....and u want another highend gaming card

Why would you want to return your gtx 970?
Not sure if you're aware of the "MEMORY ISSUE/BUG/SCAM". But yeah, that's the reason. Nvidia promised 4GB GDDR5 and we have 4GB GDDR5 on the card itself but what isn't stated on the box is that only 3.5GB out of 4GB is at its "full" speed of 196GB/s and the other 0.5GB is SIGNIFICANTLY SLOW at ONLY 28GB/s. Though, I'm not sure as to why people are complaining. Unless they're gaming at 4K which really high settings with high AA. Which is stupid, because you shouldn't even use a 970 for 4K anyways (especially in SLI). As a reply to the OP though, keep your card. Unless you play at 4K, then try to return it. But as you said you don't even game. I'd say you were already wasting your money in the first place.
If you deal with High Res textures all the time like in Skyrim I'd return the shit out of it. Or, just out of principle that they advertised 4gb in shady and the fact that you paid for a 4gb card, yes. Or, if you're just an easy going guy and feel 3.5gb is more than enough for your needs and for practicality reasons in general...no.
if you're moving to linux i'd go with a 290 or 290x. or maybe snag a sapphire 8gb 290x vapor-x