Learning x86-64 assembly

I am an aspiring game dev still in the learning phase. When I started to read Michael Abrash’s Black Book on Graphics Programming  a good portion of it is in assembly. He recommends doing assembly for game optimization (even today you can spare disk space but now clock cycles), I found I couldn’t understand assembly

Modern pc machines either Intel or AMD uses x86-64 instruction set. What’s your opinion on learning assembly? I recently purchased a bunch of x86-64 assembly language books

The book is from 1997.  Computers have gotten faster since then.  I can't think of any reason to learn assembly now other than to learn about CPU architecture.  C is fine for low level coding.  And Java is fine for most programming where speed matters.