I bought the Witcher 3 months ago but still haven't been able to play because my graphics card is a bit of a lemon... and no matter what drivers I try to put on it, it still crashes... (in most games)... so I'm hoping to get a suggestion on a good, stable graphics card to play the Witcher 3 with. My fiance doesn't have the best computer spec-wise but games *never* crash for him.

My current setup is:
Windows 7 Pro
i7 3770k (ivy bridge)
8 GB ram
850 power supply
SSD and HDD

ASUS GTX 670 Ti (Bought in 2012)... it seems a lot of the factory OC cards (like this one) are very finicky, from what I've read on forums over the last couple of years anyway.

So is there some not factory overclocked graphics card that will play the Witcher well with High (I don't need Ultra) settings and just work for the most part... a crash once in a while I don't care about... but every 5 minutes (or several times a day) is ridiculous.

I was looking into the GTX 970 and 980, but is there a version of these cards that players have noticed are more stable than the others? A particular brand name or basic model/version that might give me less problems?

Thanks for the suggestions!

Stability is not necessarily dependent on your graphics card - how much will a game crash is determined by many factors, your complete hardware configuration, your operating system, your installed software, individual drivers for every single piece of hardware etc.

That being said, surprisingly often, overheating hardware is source of instability (or, naturally, hardware which can't run a game properly). So here's what you should do:
Download hardware monitor
Leave it running in the background as you play a game. When temperature of a piece of hardware exceeds 80 degrees, it's overheating and can be source of crashes.

With that in mind, if you are looking for a stable graphic card with some longevity, do invest in NVidia hardware from good manufaturer and good cooling. My MSI NVidia 970 barely ever reaches 70 degrees under stress and shuts down coolers while idling because it doesn't need them, while my old 560ti sounded like a plane turbine and routinely reached over 80 degrees under stress. Generally, when looking at purchasing a graphic card, I look at hardware manufacture by MSI - I've got great experience with their stuff, even if it's a bit pricier. Generally speaking tho, any GPU from GTX970+ series shoud be fine - look at some reviews first tho. Furthermore, ensuring your computer case gets good air flow can help dramatically as well - if it doesn't, get a new case. Feel free to read more on this on Tom's hardware.

The last step to ensuring stable games and software in general is to make sure to have a clean computer. Try uninstalling unnecessary software, get rid of as much software which gets launched automatically with windows as possible, uninstall stuff you are no longer using. The best option is clean Windows install of course, but that's not always quite as easy. Tell your anti-virus software to do a troughout scan and make sure it's updated.

Edit: Oh, and I can't stress this enough, keep your hardware clean. Dust is a killer of fans, underpowered fans are a killer of your hardware - not to mention other, less obvious adverse effects. Personally, I clean my computer every 2-3 months.

Edit2: And make sure your power source is up to snuff. If 850 means 850 Watts, it most likely is.

Thank you for the reply and the links. I have used temperature monitoring software from the beginning. Everything is great temp wise except the gpu... it always ran hot, so I have a custom fan setting for it that keeps it cool and now it never goes over 70 anymore. But it still crashes.

I did a fresh install of windows a year ago but it didn't make much of a difference. I have very little on my gaming desktop, all the junk software I have to install for school/work is on my laptop.

You mentioned MSI. My laptop is MSI brand (first experience with that company) and I haven't had any issues with it. I found this one on Newegg... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127832

I've always chosen Nvidia personally, but my fiance has Radeon and I wouldn't be opposed to trying AMD either. I know I'd lose the Hairworks, but that's okay. ;)

Keep in mind that overheating can damage a gpu. If you had problems with overheating when you first got the card, it could have damaged it and now that W3 is stressing the card, it's showing its weakness. Might run for years without issue if it's not stressed.

Just a possibility.

imo Fenixp has given you solid advice. I won't bother reiterating.