Is my Graphics card dead?

[Darkstorm]

Hello

When I tried to play Phantasy Star Universe on my Pc last night it acted weird.

When i got to on of the planets the screen froze for ages then made a buzzzing noise and unfroze.

then when i went to the main colony it wouldnt even load in the graphics and kept going back to the laoding screen then failing over and over.

and now finally it's even freezing on the character select screen (where you see a 3d rendition of you character)

I'm pretty certain it';s not the game as I had that 3d mark test thingy on my pc so ran that and it also froze up.

From the sounds of the above is my card the problem? it and the insid eof the pc had gotten rather dusty but even after 'dedusting' it it still did the same crash.

any advice would be appreciated, one thing I did notice was when it had locked up my cpu usage went up to 100%

thanks

[huxley]

What card have you got?
Have you tried removing the drivers and set it up again?
Got the latest drivers?
Swap slots.

Dusting out a pc can cause problems sometimes - static etc.

[briareos_kerensky]

Yup, graphic card problem. If you want, try to uninstall and reinstall the drivers, but it's more likely that the card is overheating due to a failed fan. Had the same problem once, the card would freeze every time I tried to launch any kind of 3D application. Replacing the fan solved the issue, but unfortunately the excessive heat damaged the GPU and a week later I had to replace it.

[fallenangle]

Don't most decent graphics cards have inbuilt temperature monitoring somewhere in their settings? If you can find how to access it for your particular card you should be able to tell if it is an over-heating problem or not.

[Darkstorm]

One thing I did notice was the matal around the fan was very hot to the touch, weird thing is the rest of it works fine I can boot Windows wtach movies and whatnot just anything 3d seems to make it go into freeze mode

[huxley]

What make and model card do you have?

[briareos_kerensky]

One thing I did notice was the matal around the fan was very hot to the touch, weird thing is the rest of it works fine I can boot Windows wtach movies and whatnot just anything 3d seems to make it go into freeze mode

While in 2D mode (Windows Xp and previous GUI, non-GPU accelerated movies and so on) all graphics card can handle the heat they generate just with the passive heat sink they all have. Once you start a 3D application, however, the GPU has to utilize all of its pipelines and shader units, producing more heat and thus requiring active cooling (or a better passive cooler).
My advice is to change the HSF right away for a new one if the fan has stopped working or in the not-so-long end your card will suffer irreversible damage.