Thanks again Kony and Paulmd.
I was surprised as this is the first time I remember a video card
failing.
Well there's a first time for everything... but sure, take
any of the more modern moderately heat-producing cards and
once the fan stops it's days are numbered.
The shame is how poor the fans usually are, even on many
very expensive cards. Any card I've owned that was worth
over $75 I refitted with a different heatsink and fan...
usually an old socket 7, 370, or some other less commonly
known format heatsink I had leftover from yesteryear. If
the hunk of metal will allow (or you can devise an alternate
method, I've sometimes tapped holes and other times even
epoxied in brass threaded inserts) a quality major
manufacturer fan at least 50mm x 15mm at very low RPM, it'll
allow not only years of life but be far quieter the whole
time.
In other cases you end up having to pull off the fan every
year or so and clean out the dust and lube it with a drop of
thick oil. Some will suggest using thin oil which doesn't
work well at all on these tiny fans, their bearings are too
shallow and the horizontal orientation results in the oil
quickly running out of the bearing.
This is was a Ti-4200-128 (4x AGP) with a fan. I wondered if
replacing the fan would fix the card, though I have already replaced it.
If the system is left turned off so that it's cooled down
completely, if the system (video) doesn't then come on
immediately when turned on, the card is toast. Even with no
fan running it would work until it had overheated which is
at least > 1 minute with the fan stopped.