I would first recommend installing sensord
to test the temperature of various hardware devices (CPU for example):
sudo apt-get install sensord
After that simply run sensors
to get a reading. It should look something like this:

If you can get to the desktop somehow (Or change to another desktop or even run an LiveCD or LiveUSB image to test the hardware) you can install psensors

or from the Panel

You can also check the Hard Drive temperature with hddtemp
just in case it is also affecting the freezing problem:

Lastly there is another GUI app called i-nex which is first added to Ubuntu via a PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository nex-development-team/stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install i-nex
Then simply run i-nex:

As you can see there are a couple of ways of checking the integrated video card, PCIe video card of even the CPU and HDD for temperature readings.
I would also recommend checking in your laptop/motherboard site if they have an updated firmware. In my case I was having a similar problem when using 3D with the HD card until I updated the firmware.
Another upgrade I recommend is to either apply the Xorg Edgers PPA or the Intel Graphics installer Update:
Intel Graphics Installer - https://01.org/linuxgraphics/ - Simply download the appropriate driver package and install. You can also find the changelog in there.
Xorg Edgers PPA - Run the following 3 lines and then reboot to see the enhancements:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
That should leave you with an updated Mesa, Intel drivers and a couple of more things as shown in the Xorg PPA site.
So you have various alternatives to check and update the system.