mh heat issue maybe? if the card is older it can show some wear out effects.
I asked because in case the price difference is significant one can also
buy the card were it is cheaper and mail it to you. paypal makes it all possible.
claas
most likely your graphics card is over heating. dont let it crash your pc too many times, it’ll eventually corrupt your hard drive to the point you have to format and start from scratch. if you haven’t created backups of your hard drive yet do it now, its a pain to reinstale everything 1 by 1 and alot of the times i cant even find my disks or the registeration codes. its usually about 7-10 times of the bsod before windows refuses to boot up because of a corrupted hard drive. once it starts over heating it gets worse every time
download everst http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/Everest-Home-Edition.shtml and have it monitor you system. it will tell you your gpu cpu tems and fans as well as psu voltage. the ati card uses much less voltage than your nvidia so there is a possability your psu may be going out, but most likely your gpu is over heating. it sould let you know what is going out and if its because of low/inconstant voltage or excessive temps. run the bench marking and see what you temps, fans, and voltages do. if the gpu gets hot and the fans dont kick in your fan has gone out. if the voltages drop or start swinging all over the place it may be your psu. if the fan works and the power is sufficent then the card is going out.
if you noticed your computer getting quieter you gpu fan may have went out. those can be replaced, but i find it better to replace over heated cards. they never seem to be as stable after they over heat to the point of shutdown.
All true, I don´t like nvidia´s company spirit either and sell myself to the one who does it for me, but one always has to bear in mind that nvidia is a company that has to generate revenue and pay its employees.
They somewhat opened CUDA already, but it still is nausiatingly proprietary.
However their R&D did a great job developing CUDA, and it was not really intended for PhysX or us Raytracers. It was designed for fluid simulations, weather simulations, protein folding, genome decoding and other scientific and industrial purposes - thats where they generate the money and with their TESLA blades.
We merely benefit of this development as minority.
Basically AMD made GPU computing for the enduser and did not too good (for now).
Nvidia made GPU computing for the industry and the endusers discovered it for them.
I doubt it is as simple for nvidia to say “OK. lets donate CUDA to the open source community” having many industrial customers behind it backing it up with money we dream of.
And the rebranding… marketing move not to loose it all to ATI 
My guess is that during all the rebranding Fermi was in heavy development. I am pretty sure at that time they put all power in that, they had no resources left to develop something in between and they still had lots of ground before ATI was to catch up.
I guess they also where afraid to all blow it as TSMC had serious probs with the yield of Fermi, so they threw out some rebrands and green IT products.
Basically you can only blame the users stupid enough to sell their old 9800GTX+ and buy the brand new 250GTS because of the awesome new numbers
Which brings me to the next post
I think nowadays thats a narrow minded attitude. There is no better company, or better hardware in general, you got to pick your hardware particular for your needs. And you have to be aware of architectures, chip generations and their benefits and downsides and their compatibility with one another. As for graphic cards you got to choose:
ATI:
good price : performance
crappy AF
superior AA
lower noise (with non reference cooling)
less power consumption
only openCL
no hardware tesselation that is worth mentioning
hydravision
“perpetual beta” drivers
Eyefinity
nvidia:
high end products but expensive
superior AF
inferior AA
loud like a hairdrier (with reference cooling)
powerhog
CUDA + openCL
hardware teselation
3D Vision
nVision
solid drivers
good linux support
As already stated I got a fermi currently because of CUDA and 3DVision and because the AF flickering in games gives me the creeps
However I actually wanted a 5870 because I don´t believe in Fermi.
Nvidia hit a dead end.
They can´t make the chips bigger.
They can´t make them consume more power.
They can´t expell the heat anymore.
So once the ATI 6000 series goes retail the question is, what is nvidia going to do?
There are exactly 4 possible reasons:
1.) Card overheats (go with rdo3´s recommendations)
2.) Your card has a broken capacitator
3.) Your PSU is broken and under load can´t supply the Graphiccard on the 12V rail anymore or draws too much power.
4.) The nasty nvidia driver goo after several updates.
@4:
download driver sweeper from 3dguru (http://www.guru3d.com/category/driversweeper/)
go to add/remove software and remove all nvidia drivers.
reboot and start savemode (hit F8 after POST)
start driver sweeper and clean all orphane crap from the last nvidia drivers
reboot into normal mode
cancel hadware installation assistant to prevent from autoinstalling graphics driver.
install latest nvidia driver
That said, it all ending up in the usual nvidia vs. ati discussion, its far beyond black and white, and the average enduser saying “ATI is communist hardware and blows, nvidia is superior in all aspects” while the other says “I hate your wealth you nvidia buying monkey, ATI is faster cooler and cheaper” - those are ignorants.
@agentmilo:
I don´t know about indias trade area and taxes and customs.
But I´d look into buying a used card on ebay. You get lots of cheap nvidia cards at the moment because many enthusiasts and hardcore gamers buy the 400 series and sell their old cards, or if you can wait a bit for the ATI 6000 series, I am sure ebay will be swarmed with ATI cards then as many will upgrade.
Usually all ranges of cards are on ebay then naturally.
The one who had a 5000 series buys a 6000 in the shop and sells the 5000 on ebay and the guy with the 4000 series gets the 5000 from ebay and sells his 4000 series and so on.
New card releases usually trigger a salesavalange on ebay.