My graphics card is dying!? :*(

I have a 8800gt and its seems like it has started to die... or something...

When i started my favorite game "call of duty 4" yesterday i noticed something odd, i was getting odd lag spikes and it didnt take long for me to discover that it wasn't my network... so i presumed it was my gfx card...
After 10 minutes of playing, the textures ingame started to flash and turn darker. The scenery looked like this:


After this the lag spikes begun to accure more often (like every 10 seconds)
And then this happend:

After this i pressed ctrl+alt+del and went to desktop and my screen was full of small
dots like wise:

The only way i could get the dots off was rebooting the hole pc. When i checked my gfx card temperature it was at 69c
I tried changing my drivers to older ones... but the problem persisted.
so im asking you for help :D

It's like mostly related to the 8800GT, but it might be something with your power supply unit too, and there's a remote chance of it being a problem with your PCIE slot and even the processor...try "erasing" your vid card's PCIE connector with a hard rubber eraser and try to remove any oxidation and dust you might have on it...everytime I thought I had lost one of my ram sticks or my vid cards, this little trick had helped me a lot...Â

As always im suggesting to remove dust.

As the above poster has said, make sure you give your computer (inside) a good clean out to get rid of muck and dust, this can affect your temperature heavily if a fan is blocked by dust. Also make sure that your graphics card fan is spinning alright and not being obstructed. Lastly, download some software which allows you to see how fast your fan is spinning (To make sure it isn't stuck at like 20% or something). (I cannot remember the name of the software, but search on google, it'll turn up).

It's called speedfan

download speedfan, or rivatuner and up your fan speed to 100%, and make sure you aren't overclocking. If these don't fix it, try deleting drivers, driver sweeping, and installing new nvidia drivers. If that doesn't work, you may have a dying card, though I'm not sure.

Sorry about the double post, not sure why it happened. please delete

I cant check my fan speed cause my gfx card has some odd fan... :) it doesnt show inside speedfan, rivatuner or smartdoctor.
But it looks to be in ok condition.
I got rid of all the dust inside my pc, aswell as sweeping my old nvidia display drivers... :) then i degraded to the windows 7 185.xx drivers and guess what... :) ive been playing for 2 hours without a problem. THANK YOU EVERYBODY!
I guess im still gona check my fan speed just in case, if i find a program supporting the fan i got.

Happy to hear :)

So it was all clogged with dust?, Also requesting wallpaper.

Try EVGA Precision its at EVGA site. It works on most cards. :)

I love windows 7