GPU dying or software/driver issues?

[DarkEnergy]

This started two days ago, I was playing a game and then received a bsod, something to do with nvld.... (nvidia). After restarting the computer everything was fine until I jumped into the game again and the game froze. I did another restart. After the restart there was a lot of gui lag. I could move the mouse for a second and then it would freeze, repeat over and over. I restarted the computer for a third time and came to a screen with artifacts all over. Everything was smooth except for the artifacts. Sometimes they're white lines, sometimes they're pink squares. I restarted a 4th time and still had artifacts, this time the monitor was not at it's regular resolution. A few more restarts with the same problem and I decided to disconnect everything. I took the gpu out and put it back in. After turning on the computer, everything appeared to be working until I launched a game. On the menu screen there weren't issues but loading the map crashed the game with "FATAL ERROR: The GPU is not responding." No artifacts though. I had a driver update so I updated. Since then no problems. All day yesterday I was able to play games. This morning I turned the computer on without issues, went to school, and came back. After coming back I tried logging in but everything was laggy. The screen went dark and came back and after a few minutes I could log in. Looking at event viewer I see "The description for Event ID 14 from source nvlddmkm cannot be found" and "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered."

 

I've already tried a newer driver. Could it still be the driver or the gpu? GPU in question is in my signature.

 

[DarkEnergy]

I just launched Minecraft and was able to play it. Until I closed the game. Periodic freezing, music sounding digital, the whole schebang. Event Viewer shows the same thing as in previous post. Driver crashed twice within 5 seconds.