yay steam!
i'd love to blame them, and truly hope it is so...
odd things happen with pc's though.. i had a 3d video card that would handle the most advanced 3d games, but when you playted a 2d movie or tv show on the pc, it would choke and initialize a vpu recovery, lol... every 2-3-5-10mins or so... very very often that you couldnt' watch it... can't be easy onthe gpu, either. probably why it died after ~5 years. nevr had that happen
so as not to be depressing, youshould know there was a workaround for that particular card. i had to tweak the 'stepping' of the gpu and essentially remove "state0", the idle state. later i found i could just bump it slightly and it would be good to go.
i replaced that card with the same exact GPU but from different manufacture -> absolutely no problems running anything... same drivers, different firmware, i guess?
be very careful when choosing amd/nvidia cards... if one is $10-$30 dollars less but hte same exact model, there is a very very good reson to shell out that extra 10-30, i promise. avoid the low-cost manufacturers like the plague!