Is My Graphics Card Dieing?

[G-Man]

Greetings.
Lately my Geforce 6600GT (zomg ancient) has been randomly throwing up artifacts in games, usually only after a while of playing.
Usually after the artifacts happen the game will either crash saying its unable to initialise 3d rendering, or the entire graphics system just shuts off and im left with my monitor saying "no signal".

I've tried different drivers and its a clean windows install as of this week.
GPU temp as reported by the drivers is topping out at 64Cish in games and i've tried downclocking with no change. (card has never been overlocked unless it shipped like it)

Couple of camera phone pics to show the artifacts:


If it is about to die on me whats the best replacement? Roughly the same performance as the 6600GT for the lowest price possible?

 

[G-Man]

Think my budget would be around the 50 notes mark..crappy timing of it breaking :/

On an odd note, the detect optimal option in ntune's overclocking suggests overlocking the memory and downclocking the core :S

 

[G-Man]

I've been running it for the past 2 days with the core on 400 and the memory on 800 (defaults are 500/1000) with no real difference sadly


How does an 8500GT compare with the one you linked? (i am so out of the loop with graphics cards these days lol) Local shop claims to have an 8500GT for £63 (and their 7600GT is £70 )