The 900 series is not defective; that's FUD. The 970 is the only card subject to the problem. The 980 performs all the way up to the full 4GB VRAM. Nothing wrong with the 980.
It's not just that though it's Nvidia's promises that Maxwell would be 20nm, so much for that.
Even though EVGA has long been nVidia's flagship manufacturer, and they still have the best warranties and customer support going, other manufacturers have better cooling implementations that run quieter and cooler. Gigabyte G1 and MSI 4G models are the best of these. ASUS, Palit, and Zotac are not far behind, though I really dislike Zotac support. With any high-end card, you should make sure it will fit your case; the Gigabyte is 312mm long.
Which would you go for between Gigabyte and MSI?