If you had a top of the line Intel CPU from 4 years ago, today it'd still be competitive with AMD's top CPUs, at least for gaming.
If you had a top of the line AMD CPU from 4 years ago, you'd have a nice toaster.
AMD fans have gotten louder than ever (and quieter, heh), but the fact remains, AMD can barely compete at the top end as far as gaming goes.
For a short while, AMD had finally met up with Intel at the top end of gaming CPUs (i7 8700k vs Ryzen 7 2700x).
Now the i9 9900K clobbers that comparison.
And yes, some people will immediately yell no fair because the 9900k will cost up to 200$ more, but if you're building a PC to last years, who cares?
My gaming PC has a 4790k that's been running at 4.9 Ghz for over 4 years now. I upgraded the GPU to a newer card, Vega 64 (would have been a 1080ti but all the 38" ultrawides only support Freesync), and that 4 year old CPU isn't a bottleneck yet.
Saving 200$ back then would have been the difference between needing a new motherboard, CPU and RAM today, easily a justified investment.
I know where you're coming from, I did the same just two gens earlier (i7-2600, r9 290, WQHD) and am quite happy with that. But: That's back then... Today the situation is different, since the two can actually compete.
I remember a recent review stating whether you could still use an FX chip for modern games and the answer was essentially, technically, if you only play at 1080p, have a very beefy GPU (which will then be gimped by the FX) and are careful with settings.
The 7700k was getting almost double the FPS in the same rig...
Meanwhile benchmark videos show the 4790k at most 10 FPS of the 7700k in almost every single game tested, and never the difference between playable and never struggling to exceed 60 FPS, even at higher resolutions.
If you had a top of the line AMD CPU from 4 years ago, you'd have a nice toaster.
AMD fans have gotten louder than ever (and quieter, heh), but the fact remains, AMD can barely compete at the top end as far as gaming goes.
For a short while, AMD had finally met up with Intel at the top end of gaming CPUs (i7 8700k vs Ryzen 7 2700x).
Now the i9 9900K clobbers that comparison.
And yes, some people will immediately yell no fair because the 9900k will cost up to 200$ more, but if you're building a PC to last years, who cares?
My gaming PC has a 4790k that's been running at 4.9 Ghz for over 4 years now. I upgraded the GPU to a newer card, Vega 64 (would have been a 1080ti but all the 38" ultrawides only support Freesync), and that 4 year old CPU isn't a bottleneck yet.
Saving 200$ back then would have been the difference between needing a new motherboard, CPU and RAM today, easily a justified investment.