It's counted from when you got the card that you're upgrading.

In my case, I got an Ascend->Aspire upgrade just half a year or so after upgrading no-AF->Ascend, but: I'd had the no AF card for many years before that.

So the answer is different if you applied "from scratch" for the card you're trying to upgrade from, versus if you upgraded before and the total time you've had that card account is more than a year.