This problem is causing more of a headache than I thought it would. Now I'm starting to be concerned that this issue isn't limited to SWTOR alone. I've been primarily playing SWTOR but haven't played that many other games to notice in the long term whether I experience any issues. I can now confirm the following three problems were noticed when first using the graphics card in SWTOR.
1) Black-outs:
Upon launching SWTOR or inducing a visually intensive sequence (Carbine blast with the Imperial Agent, or a visually chaotic Warzone) the screen would black-out and would need to be refreshed by minimizing and then resuming the SWTOR application. In each scenario game audio will continue in the background, but the screen will remain black. Now with the latest drivers installed I have not noticed the issue when firing carbine blast (or visually intensive sequences). However, the screen may black out when adjusting Shadow settings or after a set period of time randomly blacks out with no patterns. This seems to coincide with a lot of the forums you linked in this thread that suggest the graphics card is doing a power reset of some sorts. It may also correlate with some of the shadow setting difficulties I have been having listed in point 2.
2) Shadows/Pixelated Shaders:
In-game shadows for environments during cutscenes are extremely blocky or pixelated. This seems to have been refined extensively in the latest (December 2015 driver update). However, the problem is still apparent here and there. This seems to be the only setting that casuses issues. I know you mentioned you had not been able to test this with your own 970. This would be helpful to know where the problem lies.
3) Framerate Lag/Stutter:
When updating my graphics card to the latest (December 2015) drivers stuttering became a problem. After following your suggestion to change the CPU pre-rendered frames to setting "1" in the NVIDIA control panel, this has been completely resolved.
None of these problems were affected by using the Debug mode in NVIDIA Control Panel.
I will update this thread with specific version numbers and better grammar when I have the chance. For the time being my concern is whether or not they are going to ever make the EVGA 970 graphics card stable. Why was this the highest rated card on Amazon if it has all of these problems? How does anyone deal these type of problems.
What would be different between the hotfix link you provided and updated drivers? I'm leery trying anything that isn't officially from NVIDIA or EVGA.
Once again, thank you so much for your assistance!