I personally own an X700 Pro along with an X800 Pro for my gaming rig.
The X700 model is very good for the price, well at least here in the states you can get the X700 Pro with 256MB of frame buffer for about $200.
When I was pricing the 6600 GT, I found some for about $250.
What you need to look at is some of the basic specs for each GPU and of course look at some sites like Toms Hardware Guide and the like that performance rate the different GPU's.
You may find that a few frames differnce will not really be apparent on your machine except for the pricing of each card of course

I've heard good things about both the current gpu's from ATi and nVidia so you mainly are going to vote with your pocket book.
If you can get a 9800 Pro for dirt cheap, this is still a very good card, just doesn't have the extra GPU features that both the GeForce 6 series and the X6/7/8 series have.