Windows 7: Laptop stopped recognizing offboard GPU

Hi,

Two weeks ago my friend bought a laptop with an offboard radeon 7470.
After installing the drivers he managed it to work together with the Intel integrated graphics.

Apparently yesterday he was playing battlefield 3 and the laptop was hot and stopped working.He pushed the reset button and now the radeon 7470 does not appear even in the device manager.




Im used to desktops, wich when there is a problem with the videocard, it doesn't even start windows and the motherboard tells what's the problem.
But the laptop works just fine with the Intel integrated graphics.

So I'm wondering, could it be a software problem? Or it's sure to be hardware?
In any case, what could it be?