Silly question that really doesn't need solved, just curious. (GPU related crashes)

[Psycommu]

Again, posting from my old broken down laptop on a trip.
The reason that I gave this laptop to my dad and got a new desktop was because...
Well...

Whenever I would play a game, my computer would crash horribly, covering my screen in pretty colorful lines. The lines being in the colors that were on the screen at the time of the implosion.

I narrowed it down to my stupid integrated graphics card. I killed it by playing a game that was asking too much of it. Not to mention, the fan in this is half broken so it overheats. Alot. Right now it's at 153F. It used to hit 210F and shut down. It also may have a motherboard issue or two, because rarely, it gets stuck on the BIOS while booting, and sometimes fails to recognize USB ports, the SD card slot, the webcam, and the speakers, requiring a restart.

Specs:
AMD Turion X2 2.10 GHz 64-bit CPU
ATi Radeon HD 3200 Integrated shit
Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit, obviously
4 GB RAM

My question is, was my speculation right? Note that I did reinstall my video card drivers many many times. The first time I ever needed to reinstall them was because I started up that game that killed it, and there were artifacts. EVERYWHERE. It was a nightmare, player models stretched out all over the place!
Game was Champions Online, btw.

P.S.
I am pretty literate at computer related things, but hardware is definitely not my forte. So excuse me if I get confused and/or say something very stupid. :saddowns:

[CjienX]

[quote=superduperscoot;25135818] not to mention, the fan in this is half broken so [b]it overheats. Alot.[/b] right now it's at 153f. It used to hit 210f and shut down.[/quote]

I think I found your problem

[Psycommu]

I don't think overheating would have anything to do with the epic GPU fail. Because when I tested it with TF2 to see if I fixed it, it crashed less then 5 minutes into joining a server.

[CjienX]

I'm gonna take a shot in the dark here. Was the computer at all hot or making very loud sounds before it crashed

[a7y]

You are wrong. That is exactly what overheating does, it causes your GPU to fail.

[Psycommu]

Not really.
I think it was around 170, 180F when it crashed.
Only loud sounds would be the half broken, loose fan. And it was silent at the time.

Edit:
Well... I mean I would sit in a very cold place and set my fan to blow RIGHT in the vent (which usually would cool it down about 30 degrees) and when I would play a game, it'd still crash even when the CPU was at 170F.
Even at idle, this thing sits around 140F while plugged in and at high performance settings.
I can't get GPU temps due to this being an integrated.

[Psycommu]

So, no other opinions?

At home now btw on my own computer.

Also, how can it overheat if it crashes within less then a minute into a game?

I'd post a video showing what exactly goes on but... I want to spare you all my INCREDIBLY annoying voice and ugly reflection of myself on the screen. I hate it as much as anyone would.