Gradually upgrade parts or Rebuild every 5 years

[rm53]

I built my first PC in 2012 with mid-low level parts (i5-3470, Radeon 7850, 8gb)

The problem is, my video card only has 1 gb of ram and a lot of the new games being release require at least 2.

My question is, is it recommended to just use what i have now till 2017-2018 and rebuild

or

Buy a 970 and gradually upgrade part by part

 

[ArnoBaes]

I would Indeed buy a higher-end GPU right now and whenever new line-ups release buy the older gen products that are still very good but a lot less expensive

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

Keep upgrading parts as you need them. Next thing you should upgrade is a new GPU, then upgrade to a Cannonlake (7th gen) CPU and DDR4 RAM. Add more hard drives as you need them.

 

[1LiquidPC]

You should just upgrade the GPU since your playing games. Windows 10/DX12 may better utilize your CPU as well. Other parts are fine for now.

 

[Zerk2012]

I built my first PC in 2012 with mid-low level parts (i5-3470, Radeon 7850, 8gb)

The problem is, my video card only has 1 gb of ram and a lot of the new games being release require at least 2.

My question is, is it recommended to just use what i have now till 2017-2018 and rebuild

or

Buy a 970 and gradually upgrade part by part

The life of a gaming PC is about 5 years with a video card upgrade in the middle.
I would upgrade the video card, then the next step would be all new parts and you might be able to reuse the card you buy now in it for a while.

 

[synphul]

I would upgrade in between full builds. Your i5 is still a good cpu for gaming, the 7850 is starting to show its age (it's what I'm currently running). That being the case a 970 would be a nice upgrade. You have 8gb of ram which is plenty for pretty much all games. Going to 16gb won't improve that and moving from ddr3 to ddr4 won't make games run any faster. You probably won't even need to consider a cpu/mobo upgrade until whatever comes after cannonlake.