Could I have potentially damaged my 7970?

[plasticslug]

Changes I made: http://imgur.com/VZ9gq

I haphazardly read a few review saying that that the 7970 has a lot of head room for overclocking.

Not fully completing my research (like an idiot) I ran home, got into the Catalyst Control menu and maxed my GPU Clock and Memory clock settings.

GPU Clock 925 Mhz --> 1126 Mhz
Memory Clock 1375 Mhz --> 1575 Mhz

I continued playing Crysis 1 - Highest settings + hi texture mods and the game crashed after 5 minutes. Said something stopped responding on the graphics card side

I opened up and Catalyst temperatures looked ok.

I immediately reverted back to original settings.

Subsequently the following day after a 4 hour binge on Crysis I had two incidences where Crysis stopped performing. Both in what I consider glitch heavy areas of the game.

1 When your flying around in the ships and and if you hit the ground your ship bounces across the forest floor like a bouncy ball and barrel rolls for minutes... Always guaranteed reload once it done.

2 Final boss while camping in a hole with about 200 bullets/explosions hitting you non stop for about 15 min.

Bottom line could I have potentially damaged or destroyed my card?

Specs:
Intel Core i7-2600K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler
Asus P8Z68-V PRO/GEN3 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard
Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Western Digital Caviar Black 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Crucial M4 128GB 2.5" Solid State Disk
Gigabyte Radeon HD 7970 3GB Video Card
Cooler Master HAF X ATX Full Tower Case
Corsair 850W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply

 

[Dogsnake]

Probably not. AMD cards will usually throttle back, increase the fan speeds automatically and ultimately crash if pushed beyond their limits. Using CCC it is hard to destroy a card. It does not allow for adjustments that are extreme enough to destroy the card. You can get some OC tools by other providers that will let you cook the card and possibly damage it. If you want to OC it use the CC sliders in small increments until the system crashes often then back off. Also don't forget to increase the power slider as well it will offset some of the throttling behavior under heavy loads.

 

[captjack5169]

First off, Crysis is F*(Ked. It always has been that game crashes all the time with or without the patches, so its not your card, but if your going to crank up the juice crank up the fan and monitor the temps. AMD and ATI have always been smart about their cards not blowing up so if the card gets to hot the card will shutdown or stop responding. Now if you want to truly know if its your card, get BF3 or some other high end game and see if you blow up then. or you can download 3d marks bench mark, if you can make it through that you can make it through any game. Furmark is another good one for testing settings. Just WATCH the temps. Have fun Man.