Video Card Dying?

[Reliant]

Lately my video card has been giving more and more trouble.
It will hard freeze in games and when I reboot the computer I can't load windows, I just
get a black screen. I have to go into safe mode, uninstall the drivers and then go back into
normal mode and reinstall the drivers. When I load up windows it says my video card caused the
error. Lately my computer, even while sitting inactive, has gone to a black screen for no reason, and then
about a minute later the black screen goes away but my resolution is really low and I am stuck in 4-bit color, and Windows XP
tells me that I just had a device failure. I am assuming this device failure is my video card because of the low res. and color.
Is my video card dying?
I have a Radeon 8500 that I got back when it came out and until recently I have had no troubles.
I don't overclock this card at all.

I have an XP1800+, 512mb PC2100, all on Windows XP.

 

[Reliant]

Also, sometimes when I am playing a game, my computer just reboots itself.
I know this is not my cpu overheating, it does get any hotter than 50C and my case is well ventalated.

 

[rachaelsdad]

It could be many things; since it is booting into windows before trouble happens then you might look for things like is the fan on the GPU clear and spinning; is the back of the card hot over the GPU. Is ACPI on; when you boot in safe mode are there any yellow warning tags in your device manager? I would just go throught the case and make sure all cables are where they should be and that the AGP slot is clean and the card reseated and just do a general inspection. It sounds like it could will be a software problem and a fresh install of XP may clear the problem.
Then try the latest 2.3 Catylyst drivers. Or the newest ones from Omegadrive if everything in hardware looks good.