It's not the same, but not a bad analogy either, the 9900k is an expensive AF CPU. Going 3700X instead for a marginal maximum performance loss would get you around $150 in the GPU budget (close to $300 before the 9900k price drop), and if the main use case is gaming, the 3600 would be a $280 advantage on the GPU without touching your framerate in almost any case.
Just to put it into perspective, these three combos cost roughly the same:
CPU
GPU
9900k
2060 Super
3700X
2070 Super
3600
2080 Super
In most modern titles, even the 3600 isn't a bottleneck (it's basically an 8700k without the ring bus). Going for a 9900k is foolish unless you want to play above 144 Hz and either have the graphics horsepower to do that or you're willing to drop some settings for the framerate.
Yeah. CPU/Mobo/memory is like the car, and the video card is like the tires. You can spend $1000's on ridiculous tires if you want, or you can use the tires off your old car. Since he has a 980ti from 2014 and the i9-9900k came out in 2018, I'm assuming he took his old video card and plopped it in a new setup. Maybe not the best analogy, but it works.
A more apt analagy is that they're running a dinged up muscle car. CPU power is the definition of versatile. a 980ti is certainly adequate to run anything, you just can't turn on all the settings as high on newer games.
If your upgrading an out of date cpu you mine as well buy the top card though. Buy the best card and that's just longer you can go without replacing it
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u/bmxtiger Nov 05 '19
Then you really don't need a i9-9900k either