I finally flashed my motherboard BIOS, got the latest chipset drivers but all to no avail. It turns out there is an incompatibility between the motherboard and the graphics card I chose. Of all the cards, it's like I chose one that isn't compatible: Radeon 9500 and 9700 before a certain date. It's on the ASUS knowlege base. Theoretically, mine should work since the part number is after the sequence they say has the problem but it doesn't and I've run out of any ideas to try.
So I swapped cards with my old machine and they're both working fine. I'm waiting to hear back from ASUS and ATI but I'm expecting a fob off.