Upgrade from Duron to T-Bird?

[novice]

I have a Duron 850 on a MSI-K7T Turbo (non raid) with a Coolermaster DP5-6H11 heatsink. My temperatures are around 48 degrees C. Would it be worthwhile to upgrade to a Athlon T-Bird? How much difference would I see? Would I also need to upgrade the cooling? The Coolermaster is supposed to be good up to a 1.2 gig Athlon processor. I have a MSI Geforce 2 GTS (8820) video card and 384 MB of ram running Win 98SE. We use it for games, web surfing, light word processing and some digital photo editing. With the prices falling so fast, I was considering a 1.2 gig T-Bird, but also was thinking about the 950 (just $62 at newegg). Would there be a noticeable increase in speed going from a 850 Duron to a 950 Athlon Thunderbird? Appreciate any input, particularly from anyone who has made such a switch.
Chuck

 

[Scabilian]

i noticed a few changes when I went from a duron850 to 1.2(266)

i mainly saw differences in games and benchmarks.

 

[novice]

Bumpage and further inquiry: I have read that the T-Bird is about 10 to 13% faster at same clock speed. I sort of doubt that one would see any improvement in games and overall speed. But with a 100 Mhz gain in clock speed and the added cache, would the average user/game player notice it? I would expect going to a 1.2 gig T-Bird would show a noticeable improvement, but what about the jump to a 950 or a 1 gig? Worth the $?
Chuck

 

[heffe734]

to a 950...hmm...i don't think much...from 800 to 1.4...yes...108 bucks is cheap...

 

[Viperoni]

I went from a Duron 650 @ 900 to a TBird 800 @ 1gig.
Now I regret it (waste of money)

 

[MoFunk]

I agree with heffe. Going from an 850-a 950 on anything will give very little result. But going to a 1.4 would RULE!

 

[Wind]

From Duron 850 to Athlon 1.2...yeah...u do see different especially for gaming & photo editing as these application required large L2 cache & processing speed. In terms of clock speed & FSB speed...Athlon is already better than the Duron. At 1.2 Ghz, u c different. At 1.4 Ghz...u c big different.

Go for any Athlon of 1.2 & above.