Monitor goes dark on 2008 Mac Pro Tower with ATI Radeon 5870 Card

I have a 2008 Quad Core Intel Mac Pro Tower running 10.6.8.
The original graphics card had trouble with HD movies of any kind and eventually my screen would sometimes not turn on (stayed black) when the computer was turned on.
So I replaced the graphics card for both reasons to a ATI Radeon 5870 PCIe with a GB rather than the 256 that came with the machine.
The problem was solved. I got a new monitor, one that is like the latest ones and all has been working great for a few years.
Then recently the monitor started going dark while the computer was on. (no screen saver or anything like that, I can be in the middle of work on a photo or video).
Trouble shooting I have tried.
A forum said drag the mouse to the hot corner for a while and then back. Well, I tried, assuming I was dragging the mouse to the corner. Didn't work.
I tried using the keyboard commands to shut down the computer. It didn't work.
I tried plugging the keyboard into other USB ports and tried to shut down the computer. No luck.
The only thing that works is shutting down the computer with the power button.
on start up the monitor is back on.
Sometimes it works for days like this, other times the monitor stays on only minutes.
The monitor is fine. Tested my old monitor on the computer to make sure it wasn't my new monitor.
So the questions are:
Can it be over heating?
is it worn out, toast, done and or dead and dieing?
Should I buy a replacement graphics card VS finally upgrading and getting a new computer (lots of $$$$ but then I do work in HD Video so....)
any help is appreciated
thanks
john

Replacing FBDIMMs would be today inexpensive and worth doing.
No one knows if heat is an issue without your using thermal sensor monitor. Probably want to up the default fan speeds while at it.
And because you don't have Lion+ then even more reason to setup a small maintenace volume on another drive with OS X basic system for repairs. In fact you should always have a bootable backup or two you can rely on.
Restarting may work, or it may be you have now new issue with corrupt fies or directory that a safe boot even is no guarantee of fixing.
When in doubt, try a clean new OS install on another drive.
And FBDIMMs: $25 for a 2x2GB set on Amazon.com
You want to get the most out of what you have, a small investment in RAM, maybe recycle those drives for 2-4TB units. And an SSD will have system responding better and perform better.
My guess, the 5870 wasn't needed and was overkill and a 5770 for almost half would have been more than adequate.

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