Well you can still buy a 1060 / 580, it's just not ideal.

If you're really lucky Vega keeps being terrible at mining and the mining continues so you can sell it later and get Vega at a normal price.

I can donate cardboard.

Unconfirmed.
We know it's going to be everything above the 580 so >250$.
The problem is that the high end cards come first, upper midrange later.
But no one knows the exact performance. If Vega 10 turns out to be the best thing since sliced bread and beats the 1080 Ti easily they're not going to sell it for 400$. If it sucks and barely competes with the 1080 then AMD can't exactly ask for more money than that.

Considering the size of the chip it should be at least somewhere between 1080 and 1080 Ti, but the driver apparently isn't quite there yet.

#11
Well it is an upgrade, about twice as fast.
You said

At current prices I don't think it's a worthwhile upgrade.
It is an upgrade, but >60fps on high at 1440p in new games is not going to happen.

#12
He's not in the US. You can tell by the whole "4000 Swedish Krona" budget thing.

#13
Well, all 970s still have that. Cutting down ROPs/L2 cache/memory interface is still a thing but now they are not hiding it anymore. E.g. the 1080 Ti only got 11GB RAM (down from 12GB on the Titan X), but it's clocked higher to get the same bandwidth.

As #14 said though the 1060 3GB and 1060 6GB are actually different cards because the bullshit never ends.

Well then you are fucked.
Anything faster than a 660 Ti but not as fast as a 1070 is sold out or massively overpriced.
Anything as fast or faster than a 1070 you can't afford.

I mean the only thing you can afford that's faster (not just 30% I mean) than your 660 Ti would be one of the 1060s that is still in stock.
But name a "game from 2016 onward" and I'll tell you that you won't get 60 fps on high at 1440p.
E.g. Witcher 3 (2015)

https://tpucdn.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_1060/images/witcher3_2560_1440.png

https://www.rue-montgallet.com/
Or whatever he wants to use.

250€ 1600X https://www.rue-montgallet.com/prix/acheter,amd-ryzen-5-1600x-3.6-ghz,826853
40€ cooler, literally anything, Enermax ETS-T40, Cryorig H7, Raijintek Ereboss, whatever he can find
87€ GA-B350M Gaming 3 https://www.rue-montgallet.com/prix/acheter,gigabyte-ga-ab350m-gaming-3,826075 (lots of options <100€ though)
~100€ RAM, again anything DDR4 2x8GB >= 2400 MHz is fine
93€ 850 Evo 250GB https://www.rue-montgallet.com/prix/acheter,samsung-250go-850-evo,804261
46€ ST1000DM010 https://www.rue-montgallet.com/prix/acheter,seagate-barracuda-1-to-st1000dm010,818138
750€ 1080 Ti https://www.rue-montgallet.com/prix/acheter,inno3d-ichill-geforce-gtx-1080-ti-x3,826755 (again, lots of different options here, not all were listed)
90€ G-550 https://www.rue-montgallet.com/prix/acheter,seasonic-550w-g-550,772621
54€ N200 https://www.rue-montgallet.com/prix/acheter,cooler-master-n200,788597
~1510€

See, works out just fine.
Could probably save another 10-20€ on the cooler by actually looking, but there's so many options that I didn't bother with that. Easier to figure out the rest, then see what's in stock at the shops he'll be ordering from anyway.
Even a much worse cooler would still be ok. He can get another case fan if he wants to.
Or a cheaper PSU https://www.rue-montgallet.com/prix/acheter,corsair-cx550m-semi-modulaire-550w,811579
Or getting a 1600 and overclocking it instead of a 1600X.
Or 2x4GB RAM.
Or any combination of that.

It's a laptop. You can't make it better. You can't replace parts.
Just accept your fate.

Anyone who buys a computer and only looks at the specs afterwards to figure out if it's good deserves what happens to them.

Okay, maybe I have to explain it:
You could use power-line ethernet instead of running an ethernet cable from the router to your pc.

Then it's DDR3, not DDR4.
And that means it's not going to fit on a new mobo for a new CPU. Can't have both.

I'm not sure what that's supposed to tell me. Not going to play a guessing game here.

Oh, don't worry, it is <1500€. Just Amazon France prices because I was lazy.
Unless he wants a 1440p monitor included in the budget.

Launch was announced for SIGGRAPH 2017, that's 30.07.-03.08..

But it doesn't fit. You bought it anyway?

#8
It's the best way to convince people. You just need
1. Facts.
2. A list.

#9
Yes, all Zen CPUs run into the same wall at ~4.0 GHz so if you're going to oc might as well take the free cooler and save money twice.

I don't think it'll make much of a difference for TF2 though. The additional cores won't do anything, higher IPC (if we get to see any of that, because TF2) is offset by lower clockspeeds, larger cache might be offset by higher latency to RAM or even end up slightly worse. I'd have to benchmark, but I'm not going to build a new pc just to benchmark TF2.

Streaming with NVENC doesn't use the CPU.

So only the x264 streaming would benefit.

Depending on your budget Coffee Lake might be worth waiting for (especially 6 cores).
7700K would be higher IPC + higher clocks with OC, but all in all only 30% single threaded, not sure if you think it's worth it for that price. Multithreaded a bit more due to 8 threads, but obviously still nowhere near 6c/12t.
7800X no idea how well it overclocks. ST it'll be between the 1600 and 7700K, MT better than either.
7820X might actually be close to the 7700K ST, 600$ though.
With Coffee Lake we might finally see high end ST on a 6 core at a reasonable price.

#11
y u bully me
http://www.teamfortress.tv/post/722339/my-epistimology-and-existential-thesis

#12
So what's the reasoning behind that purchase?

What would be "true Polaris"?
460, 470, 470D, 480, 550, 560, 570, 580 all already exist and are Polaris.
The new cards will be Vega which is definitely not Polaris.

Brief history of the last few years.
AMD develops GCN1 (e.g. 7970). It doesn't quite perform like they want it to. Barely competes with nVidia's new architecture, Kepler (6xx, 7xx). GCN2 (e.g. 290(X)) and GCN3 (e.g. Fury (X)) barely improve anything, the chips just get bigger.
Then Maxwell (8xx) happens and suddenly nVidia is massively ahead. Pascal is literally just Maxwell shrunk to 16/14nm, Polaris is GCN4 with the usual "these improvements should do a lot but end up not doing much" and also a 14nm shrink.
Vega is going to use the same "trick" as Maxwell so the gap could potentially™ close, if AMD doesn't mess up. The drivers require a lot of work though so the schedule slipped a bit and only a token Titan-like version was released a few days ago, with the normal ones following once the drivers are ready.

tl;dr
Fastest AMD card right now = Fury X ~ 1070. Much less efficient.
Fastest Polaris card = 580 ~ 1060. Still less efficient.
New Vega cards ~ 1080 - 1080 Ti. Similar efficiency.

Worth the wait, imho.