Is my graphic card dying?

I think it has been almost a year now , and it gets much worse recently, my computer crash very often, but only during a game, when not playing it never crash afaik. (btw it's P-7805u fx if it makes any difference). Possibilities:

- Windows 7? I upgraded to this last year and the random game crash start to happen around this time, I tried many different kind of drivers. New drivers make it worse, so I'm stuck with the most reliable one and that's the one from gateway driver download, it's dated 2010...

- Heat is not an issue, the highest my laptop goes is 85c when playing graphic intensive game (which is what it has always been as far as I remember). Also the kind of crash is different from overheating, my gpu fan had died on me before, the comp reached a toasty 100c when it automatically shutdown. When the laptop shutdown from overheat it completely turned off by itself, what I'm experiencing is crashes the monitor went black but the power stays on (and sometimes the audio went into a loop)

- Up to 2 or 3 months ago the crashes had been limited to some games (the newer ones especially so I'm guessing it was driver related) now it crashes on every single game I played... no matter what the game is, it crash within 1 hour which makes playing game suck because now my thought keeps going 'when is it going to crash' ...

So could this be my graphic card that's dying? And for a 3-4 years old laptop to experience this seems a bit excessive to me? My last laptop last me 8 years and it still ran fine too (except that it can't run any then-new games of course)...

Any thoughts is appreciated, thanks

 

I too upgraded to Win 7 in my 7805u and installed 285.79 Graphic driver back in 2011 and it has been running OK ever since. I do a lot of video editing but no gaming. You might try that driver if you can still locate it and see if that helps.

But your problem seems to be a heat problem. Have you cleaned it out?

 

I'll look up that driver, thanks. I cleaned it up I think last month when I changed the screen. I botched the thermal job though, the cpu went up a few degree to 60s from high 50s previously, but the gpu actually went down a couple degree... the temperature seems to be normal though to me which is around 60 idle and low 80s with the graphic card running... or at least that's what it has always been ever since I first use TS to monitor it

 

What Bios version?

 

TANWare, if I got the right info, it's Phoenix 9c.23.00. It's not the original Bios, I remembered I flashed it before to use TS's clock multiplier function xD

 

.23 will tend to run the GPU hot, try 9.17.00 but if windows 7 you will need too use the 1394 legacy drivers.

 

Alright I'll try that thanks. So far I've been reluctant to pinpoint the problem to heat issue since the temp seems to be at what it usually is BUT the laptop itself, the keyboard are especially runs quite a bit hotter than what it usually is... I'm about ready to give up on this comp and just get a new one xD.

 

TANWare, I haven't flashed the bios yet because I haven't the flash drive to make boot drive from (ordered one online so it's gonna be a few days) but I have another question... could my HDD temp play a role here? I know I'm probably fishing too far but I just now noticed how hot the HDD gets when I run program, the palm rest becomes very hot... I don't know if it has always been this way but it is HOT... I'm running out of ideas more than anything it seems

 

if you get the win flash program that should work right from windows. Yes, if the HDD is way out of norm it could easily overheat other components.

www.pcambrosia.com/Files/7811_BIOSES.zip