My primary workstation has an ATI RADEON 9500 Pro w/256mb ram video card. It was a good card, but lately its been freaking out whenever I load up a game. I'm not a huge gamer, but I like to occasionally whittle away a few hours. After loading up games that used to run great, say HL2:Episode One, the game starts and then the monitors go black or get all scrambled and I get a high pitched screech through the speakers and I have to hard reboot. If I lockout the desktop the monitors also flicker on and off continuously, which they never used to do. I've replaced drivers this way and that but it keeps doing the same thing. At this point I'm not really interested in troubleshooting the ATI and I just want to replace it.

I don't want to spend a fortune($100-$300), but I would like a decent card that would keep me in games for a couple years, including newer titles. I haven't really stayed up on video cards, so I am open to suggestions. It needs to have dual outputs, preferably digital and fit an AGP 8x/4x card slot. Here are my machine specs:
AMD Athlon XP 2800+ 2GHz
3gb ram
Windows XP Pro

try using nvidia gforce 8800 series, it support directx 10

It appears those are only available in PCI Express.

Well I opened the case up today and found the fan on the ATI card is seized up. I'm guessing that what is happening is that when I run a game the chip heats up and fails. The card has a substantial heat sink in addition to the fan, which is why it probably works okay when I'm working in Windows vs. running a 3D game.

What is the possibility of replacing the headsink/fan assembly on this card? Has anyone done it and can provide details or recommend parts?

Actually, scratch that. I found I can still get this card new for around $60 which will be cheaper and easier than messing around with trying to replace the heatsink/fan.