The 9600 was always a bit anemic. Here's an ancient comparison between the 9600 PRO and the 9700 PRO (which sold for about five minutes, as I recall).

The 9800 PRO is still a reasonable performer for reasonable money. I have something similar to this in my home machine. I'm not totally hip to the MAC compatibility issues anymore so you might be able to get even more FPS per dollar given a bit more research.

Summary of recommendation: throw hardware at the problem.