From what I've read the 9700 should drop to $350 retail once the FX comes out. And I wouldn't be expecting a large jump in performance with the retail card, Nvidia has been working on the drivers for this for a while now. The test sample everyone's working with will be close to everyone's retail products since Nvidia making them for everyone right now. If they thought they could get tremendously better results later on they wouldn't have let these out for review yet, especially when they're trying to drum up interest/sales for it right now. Instead, all Nvidia did was make people that bought 9700's feel a lot better about not waiting for the FX
Oh & I haven't had any problems with rendering on the 9700, glad I upgraded from my Ti4400