Cyrious

The fan spins freely? Then that points to an electrical fault of some kind. What is the specific model of card that you have?

No. That card is barely capable of displaying video streams without choking, let alone gaming. Its the kind of card you use while waiting for the good one to come back from warranty RMA, or use for testing purposes. At minimum for a gaming card in this day and age, I suggest a GTS 450. They can be had for cheap (~$35 USD on ebay), overclock well (>900mhz core clock is common), and will handle most older games with ease. There's also the fact they SLI scale really really well, if you are willing to try that.

If it was a matter of the card not getting enough power, the default action (at least it was with my now long gone 7900GS) is to lock the card at the idle clocks and voltages, and if the driver is installed, have the driver pop up a message that the card requires its PCI-E connectors to be plugged in before full functionality is restored. Except for the rare/low end cards designed to run fanless, the fans never ever stop on a video card unless there's no power, or they have failed.

Mechanical failure of the fan's bearings (dirt getting in, erosion of the metal between the shaft and the sleeve or ball bearings, the lubricant drying out and becoming paste) or electronic failure of the fan motor, as every fan used in a computer since the early 80s use brushless DC motors. If the card is still under warranty you can send it in for replacement. If it isnt, you can easily purchase third party VGA coolers and do it yourself. If it was a power supply failure, you'd have much bigger issues, like your computer catching fire.

I like to stay a couple versions behind, as it helps with the mods that I want not being all out of whack.

Dont really have anything else to do for the moment, just stopping in to say Hi. I prefer some form of Ion propulsion over nuclear thermal rockets, my motherships are sanely designed, if a bit on the big side, my Karbonite/Kethane super-rovers are 20 meter long 80 ton monsters (empty), and I only just upgraded to .90, having previously sat on .23.5 since .25 was released. Oh, and my CPU, being a 8c/16t Xeon can pound your CPU into the dirt.