Any advice on games or plugins?

[SonicXPS2]

you could try Sonic Unleashed.Its a 3D game and it works great

[dotHack]

You will be able to play quite a lot of games pal!

Check my specs (signature), I have a much "crappier" GPU than yours and I can play FFX w/o slowdowns at all, FFX-2, FFXII (minor slowdowns), Xenosaga (45-60fps, since it's an rpg it's quite playable at those speeds), valkyrie profile 2 and many others.

Just get the latest beta, try to configure everything finely, and hey, I don't even use much speedhacks (nor EE cycle speedhack neither vu cycle steal speedhack, they ruin your fmv or game =P), also don't use microUV, is slow as hell for me even on 0.9.7 beta.

Oh, and just for you to know, I play my games at 1280x800, don't need to check "native" resolution, the difference in speed is in most of the cases, unnoticeable. In Xenosaga I can tell, but not in other games, and yet I play Xenosaga at 1280x800 since quality/speed... I always go for quality.

Also disable "allow 8-bit texture" in GSdx plugin. And if you want, enable texture filtering. If my 8400GT can handle 1280x800 with texture filtering, your 9600GT will do much better and your CPU is just the same as mine. Be sure to choose GSdx plugin with SSE4.1 support too.

You'll be fine, there re lots of games you can play full or close-to full speed. FFX should run from start till end of game without a single drop in speed so be sure you are configuring everything fine.