The geared car will only seem to have more "gitty up" because it is going through the gears faster. The only problem with going through the gears faster is each gear is going to have a lower maximum MPH.
I read over and over again here at Stangnet of cars going from 2.73 to 3.73 and only picking up 2/10s and 1 or 2 mph in the quarter. I didn't really feel anything in my Stang when I went from 3.08 to 3.73 a couple of months ago.
You can think of horsepower as how fast a given weight can be moved and torque as how much weight horsepower can move at a given speed.
I can give you a real good example.
I have a 1992 5.0 Mustang and a 1995 F-150 with a AODE (4R70W) tranny. I put gears in the Mustang a couple of months ago and as I said I couldn't really feel a difference.
Yesterday I had the 3.08 gears in the truck replaced with 3.55s. Before when the truck would try to go up an incline the tranny would start hunting (downshifting) as it tried to get up the hill. Now it just goes right up the hills in OD with the converter locked. And then when I attached my 4200 pound trailer to the trcuk the difference was immense. The tranny used to hunt all the time, even going up slight inclines. But now it just stays right in the gear it started in. The truck doesn't accelerate any faster, it can just handle the weight much better.