8800GT will out perform a 9600GT (look up the stats and compare it yourself).
The 8800GT/GTS/GTX/Ultra series are still the best cards around. If you don't have the dough yet, then wait for a sale! It's definitely worth the wait
Just make sure you pay attention to things like clock speed, stream processors, etc. Plenty of cards advertise 512 MB to 1 GB of RAMDAC but it won't mean anything if the clock speed is slow!