I have a situation here which I am unable to solve.

I bought a PC last year March, here are my specs:

1. Intel Core i3 550 @ 3GHz
2. 4 GB RAM @400 MHz
3. XFX GeForce 9500 GT graphics card 1GB @550MHz
4. 500 GB HDD

Lately as soon as I load my save game of Skyrim, it crashes. I have been playing Skyrim since I joined Gaming.SE site.

Crashes as in the entire scene gets red lines. I can not ALT + TAB back or even CTRL + ALT + DEL either.

My only recourse is a hard reset via the power button. Can not take a screen shot either.

I have the latest Forceware 296.10 drivers also. This has been happening since the last 2 weeks. I always use Driver Sweeper to clean my old drivers, since that is what XFXForce recommends before installing new drivers.

I installed MSI Afterburner lately to see my GPU temperature. My GPU is default, never over-clocked it. In MSI's Afterburner, I can not adjust fan speed. It is greyed out. Also in settings there is no fan tab.

With normal Internet browsing it stays at 51 C. Ran Memtest86 over night with level 11. Took about 13 hours, but no errors in my RAM.

I even re-installed my OS, with just the 296 drivers. The fan for the GPU does come on. I can play Diablo 2. I can not get past Warcraft 3's menu selection.

There WAS some dust in my machine, but I always try and keep everything clean, since in my home town dust is an issue. Always keep cool my entire PC cabinet.

My friend came with his functioning graphics card, we bought our PCs at the same time with exact same specifications. His card did not work either. Same problem with the scene freezing with red lines.

I did do my research before posting here. That is how I was able to learn about MSI Afterburner, Driver Sweeper, SpeedFan etc. I followed posts on Tom's Hardware too regarding people that had similar problems. One person suggested and was followed by worked as well the suggestion to "Bake the card in an oven".

Since I bought it, played Diablo 2 for months, Starcraft 2 campaign for months and Skyrim recently for months. Bought ME3 also.

I am at my wits end. I do not know what else to do. I can go out and buy a card, but my friend's card did not work either.

I can use the machine for Eclipse or VS2010 development just fine. Just not with 3D gaming.

I originally posted this question on Gaming.SE But I was directed here.

I have browsed the SU database for my problem and found this, this, and this. But none of these cover my question. My machine is only one year old.

Can some experienced superuser(s) shed some light on this scenario? Is it a 3D graphics card problem? Will a brand new card work? What else can I try to pin point the problem? Can it be the Motherboard?

Thanks.