So After spending months and i mean MONTHS with a problem I couldn't trace (Thought it was some incompatibility between NZXT Cam and Corsair Link) I have finally found the issue that causes Windows 10 to randomly freeze up or slow right down to almost unresponsive and the only way to sort it is to hard reboot. It turns out it only happens when SLI is switched on and there is something using the gpu's. I actually tried to see what would happen if i switched off SLI whilst it was very slow and it crashed the display all together. I believe this issue is something in the drivers themselves. So ill be posting this over at the nvidia site unless @ManualG comes on here and can back to me on this. So therefore if im just browsing the net or watching something I can switch it off but if im gaming there is a fairly high chance it will suddenly drop the fps and i know exactly whats happened. Its been like this since forever on Windows 10. Windows 7 however is fine.
Try reducing your CPU overclock. Running GPU's in SLI can draw enough power to cause your vcore to drop slightly and cause instability or crashes. Also there is clearly and issue with your driver install as PhjysX is not checked. I would do a full on DDU and clean driver install too.
I don't know if the different bios at same card is the culprit. I suppose you can't flash them both with the same latest bios, huh?
Ive tried it with no overclock in the past with no success. I just reinstalled after a fresh format and this is the 382.05 windows download drivers im on currently don't know why physx isnt ticked but that doesnt make a difference either as Ive had countless amounts of different drivers on. I dont think i can flash the same bios. One is F13 Branch the other is F51 branch
Found this one for bottom card.. Much newer bios. Maybe you can check their website for updated 1st bios.. https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/177255/gigabyte-gtx970-4096-150104 You could likely flash this bios for both of them. Likely only difference is different monitor port configuration?