I think it was actually a bit more of a run earlier to upgrade the computers for newer, better games than it is today. Of course there's still a bit of that now, too, just not as much as the hardware is pretty much on it's peaks and there's getting less PC games - the market is getting exhausted.
The 486DX2-66MHz I got in 1995 had also only 4MB memory which I upgraded only a bit less than a year later to 8MB. Half a year later I upgraded it to 24MB RAM and an AMD X5, which was approximately on a level of 486DX4-100MHz, because Quake 1 wouldn't run smooth enough on a DX2. Still didn't on the 100MHz one, so few months later I changed the motherboard and put a Pentium-100 onto it which was a big improvement in speed, only after which Quake ran like a charm, together with few other demanding (at the time) games like Duke Nukem 3D.
Compared to now, that Pentium 100 was replaced only in 2001 with a Pentium4 2400Mhz with 256MB RAM (few months later 512MB), because I couldn't play Diablo II on the former. That P4 lasted me for 6 years up to 2007 when I got a Dell Latitude D600 notebook, and 2 years later a Dell Inspiron 9300, for it's time (around 2005) a very strong gamer notebook with Pentium Centrino which serves me very good even now.
Sure, I can't play the newer games like The Witcher, Drakensang or Fallout 3, just Gothic III and the like which is old by now, but that's ok since I don't have that much time for that anymore, anyway.
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