powercolor 9800se overheating issue

[Chucky]

Well I'm a newbie at tech powerup and I hope someone can dish out some help. Anyway I got myself a Powercolor 9800se card 128MB 256bit about three weeks ago and it started giving me some trouble. I played Far Cry for about 8hrs at a stretch (about 5 days ago) and suddenly the game started lagging and I thought maybe it was the game or something and I ran Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and it was lagging as well like when i move the mouse and pan the camera the game breaks up. This never happened before.

Anyway after I rebooted the machine VPU recover started kicking in and always kept switching to software mode.

I left everything and tried it the following night and then the card was working fine but I didn't stress the card out just played for about an hour or so.

Okay I'm running at default settings not overclocked or softmodded but the card heats up like hell(stock cooling). So do you guys think that I messed up the chip or something cos now after I play for about 2hrs non stop, games start lagging and then I just turn off the machine for it to cool down.

Is it overheating or have I just screwed the GPU. Its quite hot these days over here do you think thats a factor?

Please help..........