First of all, I'm going to voice an opinion and a favored rant of mine. See, you touched base on a half truth there. You're right, the ti4600 is a good card. no, scratch that. it's a GREAT card. now, okay, sure, the new radeon is bigger better...whatever. but you kind of brushed aside your geforce just because it's not the "leader" of the pack anymore.
do you realize how much of a victim to the marketing system you are? keeping up with the tech curve is too much like masturbation to me...you get the immediate pleasure of being 31337 but at such cost and with no end in sight! the ti4600 is a fantastic card. mod it out for cooling, maybe over clock it a little. that card will last you a good amount of time! don't worry about what happens as the tech curve moves on, just realize that you made a good decision AT THE TIME. and work with it.
</rant>
Anyway, as far as what nVidia may be planning on doing with the developmental DX9...who knows? No one can do anything but speculate until DX9 is released (leaked ^_^) and respective video card manufacturers provide cards to use the new features.
case in point, how many cards used all of the features in DX8 when it was released?
so ease up, evaluate what you have on an "at the time" basis, and try not to be such a vic.
which is a perfectly good card, but just seems like a bad choice right before 9700 cam out.
