As I said in my post I was just recently fiddling about with the card, this is a recent thing. The card has never been overclocked I used that as an exmaple to better explain what I think is going on. I'm posting information as I find out, sort of an update of events in hopes that it narrows things down.
I now have a better clue of what is going on though, thanks to that, and a new discovery. While trying to reset from a crash that happened moments before the PC, instead of restarting, spun up and the monitor regained signal. I was greeted with beautiful 16bit color and garbled graphics and a message that said, I believe, that the drivers of the card had failed. I couldn't really make anything out and it wasn't like I had much time to work it all out since the PC shut it self down while I was trying to read.
I'll try updating drivers back up again, but in my attempts to end the reign of crashing I had stepped back once already. I don't think stepping back further would help.
