I would be extremely careful about having a motherboard replaced without knowing who the maker is and what the guarantees on it are. There are dozens of motherboard makers out there, selling a lot of motherboards that are nothing but junk. They may support Pentium processors, but their other chips are cheap, they are badly insulated and are marked by other problems.

I just replaced my Abit motherboard which was just 13 months old and crapped out on me -- and Abit, along with Asus and Tyan are the better known and oft-recommended alternative motherboards.

In January I replaced the Abit with an Intel motherboard. It costs more than Abit or Asus, but carries a three-year guarantee.

In any case, before buying any board I would research it on one or all of these Internet sites:
http://www.tomshardware.com/mainboard.html
http://compreviews.miningco.com/msubmot.htm
http://www.anandtech.com/
http://www.sysopt.com/
If you can't find an evaluation for the motherboard I would not touch it.
Other issues:
There may be compatibility issues. If you go to a faster CPU, your video card may not be able to keep up, requiring you to buy a new card.

The Intel board worked with, but objected to the memory I had in my system. I had to buy memory from a manufacturer who had tested its memory for compatibility with the specific board I bought.

The new board may not fit your tower, which is a good thing. That way you can buy a new case with a new power supply which supports automatic power management. Enlite cases are among the best.

Can you do it yourself? Theoretically, no reason why not. I also yank and replace peripherals and am comfortable with doing so. But I shied away from doing my own motherboard installation, largely because I would not have time to troubleshoot any problems that might arise from a missed or badly placed connection.

I think different boards have different RAM configurations. In any case, if you go Intel or some other high grade board, you may have to get new memory anyway.

Will prices drop? Yes. Intel cuts them anyway just about every quarter.