i don't think my card is failing, it was working just fine 12 hours ago before i started this swap, only part im not 100% sure about is my motherboard, i checked pcpartpicker to see if there was a known compatibility issue with my GPU and my motherboard and it said it had none though who knows the board might be junk i did get it second hand when i bought it for 80 bucks for the 6 core Phenom II CPU it had in it, guess i could just throw my Gigabyte board back in and see what happens if my GPU works in there then i know my Asus board is just a lemon
or would going from DDR3 back to DDR2 disable some of the GTX 980's functionality and that's why its working in a lower spec system?