Howdy Friends, ill separate my story into two sections, the fluffy story kind of if you want it, and then my actual question as i would love some assistance with this:

The Beginning:
I have had this What i assumed was a Windows XP era Gaming laptop sitting among my pile of treasures for years now, the story behind how i got it is odd and wont go into details here but it sat for a good while. i don't really know why today im finally getting into it , somewhat wish i did sooner because i guess i didn't realize the specs inside? Intel Core 2 Duo P7450 +GeForce 9800M GS 512mb, was kind of shocked i never tried getting it working sooner. i didnt have a charger for it and looking online you can roughly get what's considered "new genuine" maybe old stock chargers from china only for about $50 on ebay. i have a newer windows 7 era Asus RoG (G74SX? i think.) with the same charger plug and roughly same specs? ill list images below of both so you can see if these caused the issues ill write below, i was told it should be fine as they are both roughly in spec. at first i had issues with removing the bios password, finally got that eventually. i had issues with XP trying to install it via USB as well as from the CD/DVD drive, it was around that point that i realized it was actually a Vista era gaming laptop (so i assumed it was xp because the windows key sticker was exactly like a XP one but its completely rubbed off so i couldnt read it was most likely vista instead.) no biggie, i was gonna be fine with that too i guess. Installed Vista Ultimate, rebooted once and was greeted with needing to activate... and none of the options worked.. for like 3-4 hours 🤣. i got so frustrated i wanted to try a different install like another version of vista (maybe different iso) or windows 7. i couldn't get the laptop to boot from usb now that it had vista installed, annoyed i chucked the ssd onto another laptop adapter and formatted it so i can start fresh.

The Now:
Suddenly after trying to boot it after the fresh format i have started to get these artifacts. i attached some videos (sorry about the audio.) to try to show them as they were hard to actually capture, but it shows some red lines briefly during the asus RoG boot animation and then in the bios i noticed some white dots move when i switch tabs between the bios settings. even in the windows vista installer there was some random moments during like specific changings in graphics? of course some new random things happened, best way to describe one was it looked like it was losing signal, hard to say because the bios POSTing also looks like its losing signal but i cant say for sure. It wasn't like purely random, im not sure if that for sure means the GPU is dying i opened it up to checkout the thermal paste situation, it was quite chunky. had to get the acetone to remove it so it was for sure hard and perhaps providing no cooling, the entire time i was struggling with the vista install did it kill itself getting no cooling? like i always planned on repasting it but i was waiting for the OS to install and i ran into so many issues so it sat off and on a number of times while i researched the issues... i attached another image below showing the GPU card itself slotted in (haven't cleaned fully, letting it rest until tomorrow) i was hoping to get deeper and reseat the card as sometimes with things as old as this a simple reseat really helps.
I am not familiar with Slotable GPUs like this and was wondering if anyone had any information on this? on ebay i see a few different form factors... but something like this looks the closest to what i have? https://www.ebay.com/itm/387121987039 it looks like it was for the G60VX laptop which would have been the next generation of mine most likely. the design looks fairly close and i would have to modify the heat pipes on mine a tiny bit to fit this card, if its even compatible.

So at the end of my story, i would love some thoughts. is my GPU for sure dead? how are my odds on repasting? i know thats hard to answer given my weird description of everything. can anyone tell me about these MXM vga cards? if i have to buy a new gpu and hopefully whats listed on ebay used is fine.. but if i can i want to save this card/laptop.

so for the two M4a files, they are videos, i had to change them in order to upload them here but i was able to play the files in VLC player.