It really was not much of a hassle. I installed the 4.9 cats and the game does seem smoother. I have not checked the before/after frames per second though. Almost everyone seems to see some improvement with the 4.9's.
Note, uninstall your current drivers first (Start>Control Panel>Add/Remove) reboot then install the 4.9 cats. I had no problems doing it that way. I also have Dx 9.0c installed. Not sure if that is relevant.
I get the game today so I am going to benchmark with the 4.4 drivers. I am on 56k so tomorrow I will download the 4.9's on my company's T1 . I will post benchmarks of before and after to see how big a difference the drivers make.
Since the 4.9s were labeled a hot-fix, I just installed them over my current drivers (4.6). Thats not something I normally do, but I'd heard from people who had no problem with it.
It's worked great for me so far. I went from an average 29 fps in the timedemo to an average 32 fps.
Thats a reasaonable increase (10%) for my 9600xt. I haven't run any other benchmarks or games, but the drivers make the game a little smoother, so I'd say it's worth it, you ought to see a performance increase on your 9800 pro.