I've heard a few complaints about A7N8X and radeon 9600 compatibility. You definately got the A7N8X standard version? There are many varients. The A7, being a current board 'should' work with any leading graphics card and you do get more bang for your buck with Radeon, just have a search around for compatibility before buying your card.

I beleive the standard A7N8X has only IDE controllers in which case you wouldn't be able to use a SATA drive in it unless you bought a SATA controller/convertor. I would recommend you do this. SATA controllers aren't expensive and SATA performs better than IDE.