Did I fry my graphics card?

Heh one of the reasons I hate new games. I was playing Assassin's creed and textures looked a bit jagged so I increased graphic to maximum (I was sure that my NVIDIA with 512 mb ram will support it), then I played for a while, had great graphics and run without jumps in fps, so I paused the game and went to watch tv, after 1, maybe 1,5 hours I returned, played for 5 min and suddenly my screen got all filled with lines and my computer restarted. When I started it again, there were no lines but after maybe 10 min they appeared and as I'm writing this it's getting worse and worse.

Now, I'm familiar with this problem, which is obviously a graphic card failure, and whenever other people called me because of it I advised them to buy a new graphic card (in my town they always call me to fix computer stuff lol).

So what I'm asking is, since I'm really out of cash until next month, could this problem be connected with a fixable damage on the graphics card, cause if it is I'm sure I could fix it, or do I really need to buy a new card?

EDIT: Some extra info, card is NVIDIA 8800gt and I'm also expiriencing some sound laggs, don't know if it's related but could it be a motherboard problem?

EDIT2: After cleaning my gpu from dust for 15 minutes, the lines are gone. If this doesn't change until tomorrow, I can call this problem solved.

This happened to me to, your graphic card gets like this after something like an 'overflow'; i mean within' time and mostly if you run a game like Assasin's Creed which pushes the board to his maximum potential, especially with the highest resolution.
You ran the game for much too long and it got your graphic board to 'overflow', it's not the right word but well it's comparable to a system 'overflow'.
I've had to replace it with a new one, i could use my OS without problems even though it didn't look as he did before, but as soon as i ran a game there were those black lines over the monitor.
It's kinda normal, with a GTX probably this wouldn't happen or whit a newer graphic card with higher details.
What i did as i already said it's buying a new one.
Most of the electronics related things crash like this, once i kept my Play Station 2 running for like a day in PAUSE mode since i didn't have any memory card and suddendly the laser got fried.
Wait for other pareers, even though that's the most probable solution.

EDIT : I didn't read your last edit, was writing already but well then it might does it again since it's something of 'temporary' but i hope this won't ever happen again obviously for you.

Cinc I had the same problem with the same card, it started with green lines when I was playing Assasin Creed lol, the pc restarted. Same story. It went back to normal for 1 week, then when I started playin L4D it started to get worse.
Fortunately those gpu units had 3 years warranty from their producer (most cards have only 2 year period) so I just send it to service, they didnt replace it, they just fixed the memory core on the card. Its a known flaw for this 8800 series, casue card fan isn't cooling the memory core, so even if I had only 40-50 Degrees on all temperature tests, it started to overheat. If you know how to fix the memory core (and if thats the problem in this case) then You should avoid loosing cash.

Thanks for the advice, the lines appeared again after ~20 min of babo, and after pc restarted they dissapeared, so it's most likely overheating. I'll check the card in detail tomorrow, and i believe i have some extra graphic card fans from my old computer so I'll try and set up some kind of additional cooling system.

The problem is, that its already damaged. You wouldn't get that kind of graphicall artifact otherwise. If I am not mistaken the memory core are on top of your GPU, so You would have to attach additional fans above your gpu, because below the card they wont have any effect on the core.

btw. Technics in my pc servise used soldering equipment to fix the core just so You know.

Regards

Cinc wrote:Thanks for the advice, the lines appeared again after ~20 min of babo, and after pc restarted they dissapeared, so it's most likely overheating. I'll check the card in detail tomorrow, and i believe i have some extra graphic card fans from my old computer so I'll try and set up some kind of additional cooling system.

Setting up an additional cooling system would probably resolve it on a temporary way, like Gloom said it's already Damaged this would only bring to you a waste of time since it's gonna crash again in a short while !
I think that you better start saving money, you know what has been broken won't ever work as good as it did.

Underclocking GPU + better air conduction + detailed cleaning = GPU working good so far. Left my comp running all morning and ran babo for 1 hour, could've been more but i had smth to do so i exited babo.

In the evening i'll test some graphically more advanced games, I hope this solves it.

Try this: http://www.techpowerup.com/atitool/ and test your card for artifacts if you found any this means thats its damaged afterall...

Tested for artifacts, crashed after 20 seconds

I guess i should start saving for a new one, tnx for help.

EDIT: Strangest thing ever, i left my computer on while the screen was filling itself with lines, i returned after 20 min and the lines were gone. wtf?
I'm starting to suspect that V-Ram is corrupted, it coud remain stable until a certain broken part of it is used, so I'll try to find a way to bypass it.