I have a 9800GT which is moderately more powerful than a 9600GT. I can play most games on medium to high settings, without AA or AF at 1440 x 900 which is close to the same pixels as 1280 x 1024. And I dont play really graphically demanding games like Metro 2033 or Crysis 2.
As someone else said, a lot depends on your CPU also. With a 9600GT and a non widescreen monitor it sounds like you have an older system. I have a dual core E4500 and an finding that that seems to limit me more than the graphics card in a lot of cases.
If you have a decent CPU and power supply, or can overclock your cpu, you can get a much more powerful card such as a HD5770 or 768mb GTX 460 for around 100.00 or somewhat more.