All Killer? Where you at? I see your lady goes to Radford University (or did). I used to live in Radford, VA. Now I live in Blacksburg, VA and work at Virginia Tech.
I was going to suggest the nForce2. It is supposed to be a really good board. It does have onboard video but it also comes with an AGP slot to upgrade. As for video card. I am a diehard nVidia fan and I am getting ready to buy an ATI 9700 Pro (maybe the AIW) because nVidia just shot themselves in the foot (not to mention other body parts) with the 5800.
I was gonna say you could try using a different client port. Just guess at some ports until you could get out. I know a guy who was able to get by his school's firewall using port 7000 instead of 27005.