The tests show well that the new cards are heavily outperformed by previous solutions from ATI, the X1xxx family (DX9), even though they fare on par with competing cards from NVIDIA. This is a strange situation: if you want to run DX10 games in the future, you have to sacrifice performance in modern DX9 games.
It's very confusing, to tell the truth, and it is hard to make a clear choice. Take, for example, theX1950 PRO. Looking at its performance, it is much faster than the HD 2600 XT in DX9 games, and their prices are about equal to each other.
This is something that will have to be taken into great consideration when purchasing any of these cards. DirectX 10 games won't be able to perform very well on these current cards, but at least you will have the ability to run them later on if you purchase an entry-level or mid-range card from ATI's 2xxx series.
However, would you rather prefer playing DirectX 9 games at higher frame rates and stick with a mid-range card from the previous generation? The answers to these questions rely entirely on you and your preferences.