Need advise - graphics card going bad?

Problem:
The past couple months i have been experiencing lines, shapes and glitching, during the time i play games, i think its called artifacting? I also crash within about 5-15 min after i play games like the call of duty series and sometimes i crash then i get a message saying the "Display error R300 has stopped reponding and has succesfully recoverd" I even have to resort to hard booting my computer becaouse it frezzes up. my laptop is now a year old and my warrenty is gone. Before this problem i had no probelms playing the same games that are now giving me the problem.

I hooked up an external moniter and played call of duty 4 and i still experienced the problem. I checked Alienware for updated drivers and there is none. I uninstalled my graphic drivers and i could not re install them so i did a full system recovery making it back to factory settings as well as erasing my whole c drive.

Ive done some testing on differnt games while monitering my temperature. My laptop idols at 50-55 celcius and 59-70 celcius when running games, i belive that thos temps are normal? I use a cooling pad also.

So i ruled out my moniter, heat, drivers and now i think that my graphics card is bad and i dont have a warrenty to replace the part. I researched on replacing and upgrading graphics cards and According to my manual my laptop uses MXM lvl 3 graphics card and i need adivce. Should i replace my ATI x1800 or can i upgrade to a better one? can i use Nividia? I need information on what and what i cannont put in my laptop. Im not planing on replacing the card myself but have a proffesional do it.

My laptop specs should be in my signiture.

 

am not sure what i can do as much as i want to help a ferrari man. it seems to me as a driver problem, but you have tested that theory. have you ever done some extreme over clocking before?

 

Are you overcloking? Another possibility is that some vents simply have too many dust, maybe a cleaning should solve your issue. If you see lines and glitches, it is not a driver problem, but rather something physical in the graphics card (dust and thus overheating from its normal parameters).

I hope this can help.

 

u can use nVidia, but since the card used in your laptop is not exactly MXM, you'll have to find one from Alienware or Clevo