Grinding noises from my Video Card?

[Steve]

Well it's finally giving out, my ATI Radeon 9200 video card I bought 
several years ago, is starting to make grinding noises (the fan is going 
out).
I had been using ATI since 1998 and I bought this latest one in about 
2000-2002 or so.  My luck with ATI has ranged from sucky at best to 
non-functional at worst.  This is largely due to the fact that the ATI 
driver install has got to be the biggest pain in the @ss they could 
think to come up with.
Before it goes completely I'ld like some recommendations on a good 
Nvidia card that can be had for < $150
I have no prefference on manufacturers at this time, however one that 
specializes in linux support and prefferably has a good track record 
with Linux in general and Gentoo in particular, should of course move 
tot he top of the list.
I have no need of super-duper acceleration or anything fantastical and 
magical, however the card needs to be at least as good as what I've got 
already.
More VRAM is another consideration, since I know that alot of times 
video card performance can be bottlenecked by insufficient or slow VRAM.
My current card has the most RAM I could put on it at the time 256MB.
One final consideration is that my MB only supports AGP, and goes to 8X 
AGP, so PCI Express cards are not an option at this time.
Also fan/heatsink size is irrelevant, since the only expansion card 
installed is the video card, and it's a full tower case, with a full 
size ATX MB.

Any suggestions?  Also any good places off-line and/or online your could 
recommend for purchasing it?

Thanks for the tips!

p.s. I'm noticing a few sub $200 computers around Walmart and the like, 
I hear they run Linspire and/or Windoze which can be taken care of with 
a simple format, but how does the hardware typically compare?