From reviews I have read and from things I have read from people the Gigabyte G1 is the best overall 970. You can't go wrong with any of the non reference cards from the major brands though, they are all pretty good except for EVGA because of the misaligned heatsink (this may be fixed in the future) and Inno 3D which apparently run hot and louder than the rest.
Asus, Zotac, Gigabyte, MSI and the Palit jetstream are all good. The rest are good as well, just not as good as those.