Radeon 9500 Pro problems

[Furius92]

I was playing C&C Generals when the game started to get really choppy. The animations would freeze for a second or two and then play normally for another second or two and then freeze again. I immediately updated my drivers to Catalyst 3.6, but after doing so Windows would always crash right after loading and revert to 600x400 and 14 colors. A message said I needed to restart to restore Windows's functionality. So, I put back on my old Catalyst 3.4 drivers that I had the downloaded file for, which work fine now.

However, I also checked the temperature on my card... sort of. I don't have any sort of way of measuring it, but after I closed the game and shut the computer off, I held my finger to the card (on top of where the GPU is... or VPU for ATI I guess) and it actually burned the tip of my finger after holding it there for a few seconds (you know, like if you put your finger onto a hot pan or something by accident). I'm running two Panaflo 80mm intakes and two Antec 80mm exhaust fans in my SX1030B. For a non-overclocked Intel system, that is certainly more than enough cooling. I have the IDE and power cables routed around the cards to and ar path to provide a generally clear flow from the front bottom of my case to the top rear. There are no excessive buildups of dust or anything. Is it normal for a video card to get so hot during operation? The fan is spinning properly and is not making any strange noises, same goes for the CPU fan. Any insight or suggestions to this problem would be greatly appreciated. I guess it's getting late now... time for bed I think. Thanks