Well, if you don't mind committing fraud you could always purchase an identical Radeon 9600XT from some online supplier then claim on RMA that its faulty.
The 9600XT is fine for the current crop of games, you DO NOT need to upgrade this - it even plays HL2!!!
I would definately suggest that you do invest in some new RAM, that will make a world of difference (you wouldnt believe the difference in performance between 512 > 1024mb
).
Personally, I'd check on ebuyer for a very cheap PCChips motherboard with onboard sound and LAN, grab 512mb 400mhz RAM and buy the best processor you can afford with the change.
Maybe when you have the new motherboard, you won't get the VGA fault at start up? We'll see [img]tongue.gif[/img]
Good luck with it.