I agree with David. If you've been happy with what was in there, the 9000 will be a night and day difference vs. what was in there...and is probably as much as the 450 MHz G4 can handle.
If you want to see exhaustive testing on 2-d and 3-d / gaming stuff give a look here:
www.barefeats.com
(first in this regard, simple, cosistent benchmarking, easy to get right to what you want)....as well as
xlr8yourmac.com, and lowendmac.com
which are perhaps broader in scope, but less consistent / focused when it comes to your specific issue.
I just went through the process myself, and the summary is the 9000 and 8500 turn in very very close #'s in consistency. The 8500s are scarce ((and, on ebay are often designed for PC cards that are "flashed" to mac settings...risky, no guarantees from ATI on these...and idiots are shifty trying to disguise their lineage...if someone doesn't come right out and say it's an Apple OEM or ATI Retail w/ Book and goodies I wouldn't do it.
The biggest difference between them is the output ports. The 8500 was introduced earlier, but was the higher end retail card, vs. the 9000 consumer card, which, though simpler in architecture, is slightly faster clock speed yielding a wash in most applications.
The 9800 Radeon is a power monster (literally and figuratively) you'd do much much much better to spend your $ on a 9000 and even an inexpensive CPU upgrade.
There is a new class of G4 called a 7457, it has a doubled on-chip L2 larger cache and a full 2 MB backside (L3) cache. The old G4 you have is half that, so not only are speeds faster, but, each cycle is comparably more effective w/ memory arhcitecture. Further, smaller size circuitry such that it can run at higher speeds w/ similar heat and power demands to the original chip you're using. These 7457s are relatively new, I think PowerLogix is the only manufacturer w/ retail upgrades on the market, the others are 7455A and B configs...
A 7455A or B @ 800 MHz would feel like a lot, but since its the only time you'll probably upgrade this thing, I may go for a we bit more speed if you can squeeze it out of the budget...if it were me, I'd go for a bit more, say the 1 - 1.2 GHz range. They make faster upgrade chips, but given you're needs, and the other bottlenecks in the machine, faster than that is probably diminishing returns. The bus is a 100 MHz, (not bad, same as first iterations of flat panel iMacs--except you have a chasis that is very upgradable, it would really kick butt.
I got my dad a used AGP 350 off of ebay for the very same strategy...
as fas as NVidia's GeForce cards, except for the GeForce 4 Ti (if you can find a good deal...typically more expensive) which is the fastet card that is fully X and 9 (boot 9, not classic) compatible. The 4 Ti is faster than the 8500 and 9000, especially at higher res. in hard core gaming, probably not worth the extra scratch for the uses you described. Don't bother w/ the lower cards from NVidia, just go with the ATI's - especially if you're not upgrading the processor too.
good luck
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