game taking a crap

im not at my pc right now, or id have screens, but my game just pooped itself. i just got done with a tier 6 quest, flying back in the gyro to turn it in (shit was almost 4 kilometers away!). midflight, game just shidded itself. framerate plummeted to single digits, first i was flying, but it was like i was hitting an invisible wall, then i was just... on the ground. vehicle took no damage, so i didnt technically fall out the sky. and all the terrain has the motion blur effect as im moving fast, but im not moving.

i took the motorcycle out of the gyro inventory, same thing, but the bike is alternating between going fast af, and hitting invisible walls.

i exited out, restarted my pc. load back in, game still buggy af, no change. but when i hit esc (pause) the game kind of, returns to normal.

im thinking, is my gpu dying, cause the game looks bad, rendering like crap. im about 30 hours into this game, everything was great up until.

i load up Back4Blood, game is working perfectly. i check if 7dtd needs an update. nope, current build.

anyone got any insight? ive been playing 7dtd for years, on both console and pc, never seen anything like this.