I could have told you from the beginning that a game killing a graphics card was ludicrous. That sort of thing is like the old wive`s tales that have no logic to them, but end up being believed by everyone.

everyone's mileage varies.

ATI is known to make videocard that catch fire, but the last low-end nVidia FX card i owned got fried along with my pentium 4's PSU and motherboard. BUT it lived for 5 years which isn't half-bad for a part that only had a 1 year warranty. i didn't even overclock the system.

also fun video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsQDTB3Na2M the computer crashing is its way of protecting itself from overheating? AFAIK intel CPU forces themselves to shutdown when it overheats, not sure about GPU.