Are you sure it's the videocard, not the powersupply or something else?

Yep, they certainly can just die!

A few years ago, my father's graphics card gave a small flash, and then started pumping smoke out into the room -- the rest of the computer was just fine when the card was replaced.

Has a similar problem with clear sky - as did others. Recommend playing some non game changing mods if yer card aint found to be at fault as CS often causes system wide problems for some.

Yes.

everything can just die..
there's advanced complex math happening every where around you all at once.

it's like asking, can a plate full of hot food just suddenly fall to the floor even though it was on a steady counter top and not even sticking off half way?

yes, yes, it fucking can.
why? how?

I'm not a mathematician, don't freakin' ask me.

Yeah, it´s the card. I plugged in my old trusty 8800GT and it works fine.

During the bluescreen it says something about the driver failing. I already reinstalled the driver but nothing changed.
The glitches a random lines, blocks and unreadable signs.

And yes, usually you get at least random freezes or graphic errors while playing. This card had none of these before this happend. Dunno what´s the problem is. Already cleaned it and it looks like new, no dust, no strange smells...

Cats.

Yes, a graphics card can die just like that.

It happened to me some time ago with a geforce 9800gtx. the system just crashed when i was playing some Torchlight. Afterwards It had graphical glitches - even during post.

A hot-running graphics card can over time get weakened and cracked bga solder balls under the gpu. when that happens, bad conductivity can occur, and may cause errors in graphics - or the card just stop functioning. The most prominent cases of such errors is the rrod error in the older xboxes.

In some of the cases it is possible to bring the card back to life with the oven trick, which partly reflows the cracked solder joints.

http://www.overclockers.com/the-oven-trick-repairing-your-broken-video-card-with-an-oven/

Yup, they're responsible for friggin' everything. Mine is actually responsible for my graphics card running hot. A few months ago I removed a thick ring of cat hair from my graphic cards' fan.

Look for an exploded capacitor.

...and again people being numpties without warrant!
http://www.gog.com/forum/general/as_n_when_ya_numpties/post1

As a machinery tech who answers this question at least once a week, usually in the form of "What causes that?", I'll go along with the crowd here and say yes, things do just die.

-----

A boss of mine made an interesting point about this that I hadn't heard before or since: regardless of what it is, it's a mechanical failure.

"But HFtB, the only mechanical thing on there is the fan!"

Au contraire, and some other French words. If a capacitor fails, is it an electronic fault? No, it's that some physical part of the capacitor gave up the ghost and thus it's a mechanical fault.

So yeah, some component faced a physical failure for one reason or another, and sometimes it's pointless to try to derive the cause. Whatever the reason, that card is toast.

Thank you everyone for your help!

After catching some sleep and letting the card rest I put it back in this morning but it just seems to get worse with every reboot. It crahes with BSoD right after the Bootup-Listing. Temperature etc. were all fine and fan is working like it should be. I still think it has something to do with the card´s memory but I guess there´s nothing I can do right now except getting a new card.

Has anyone any experience with the ASUS Nvidia GeForce GTX660? Thinking about getting this one as a replacement as my 8800GT is loud as hell and always runs at full power, even under Win.