This is the situation I'm in now shaw. That 9700Pro, to my knowledge, is a nice mid-level card. My ti 4600 is still holding its own and I love the card a lot. When I posted up about wanting to build a new computer, I was pretty content on processor going a64 but the video card department is where I struggled.
After talking to numerous people about it, I'm still undecided about which card I want to buy, the x800Pro or the 6800GT. There are pros and cons to both cards as with everything. I'm building this comp mainly for HL2 and everyone is going to tell me to go ATI but I have always had NVidia cards.
The general consensus was that if u want to play Doom3 more go 6800GT but HL2 go x800Pro. What are you upgrading your machine for? D3 or HL2. So to be honest, if your waiting for HL2, wait til the game is actually released and official benchmarks come out for all the high level cards and make ur decision from there. I'm still swaying to go 6800GT so if the performance of the ATI is not as over-powering as I'm thinking I'm going to grab the 6800GT.
This right here though is REALLLLLLLY tempting.
http://www.buy.com/retail/product_jump.asp?sku=10375576