In current 3d games, as long as everything else remains constant, (same mobo chipset, proccessor, graphics chip, memory), and the only difference is whether 1 card is 8x and the other is 4x, you shouldn't be able to notice any difference. In reality, there may be a 1-2 frame per second speed increase with 8x AGP slot and Card. In most cases there isn't even that much of a difference between the two. There are some games coming out, such as Doom III, that will probably saturate the AGP 4x bus. In this case, an 8x bus would probably improve your speed. But for what you are running, you would see no difference with an 8x AGP slot and card. Your system should really zoom running this program with the raedon 9500. Where you will see a definate difference is in different video card chips. A geforce 4 is incredibly faster than a geforce 2, a raedon 9700 is faster than a 9500 for example.

Allan