Help, pretty sure that my video card is dead

[gce]

So, the other day I went to wake my 10.7.5 hackintosh from sleep. The fans kicked on (and sounded like they were on full blast) but the screen remained blank. I hard-powered it down and re-turned it on just fine. This morning I went to go wake my computer from sleep and the same thing happened. Except this time, I only get a black screen when I try to restart (and loud fans).

I tried re-inserting the CMOS battery, unplugging the hard drives, and unplugging the video card. When I unplug the video card, the computer sounds like it boots up fine but of course I can't see anything. Two questions:

1. This sounds like the video card is dead to me, do you agree?
2. It's an ATI board, an MSI 5770 Hawk. Are there other compatible boards I can just swap in to test?

Thanks.

 

[gce]

Also, if I decide to switch to a GeForce card, is this going to cause some major issues? Should I just stick with Radeon and avoid the headache?