Personal computers have not elicited many thrills of late. They've gotten cheaper, sure, and a little faster. But despite some wild promises the gap between the actual and the possible has remained expansive. This week, it narrowed significantly. Devices that run all day, but for real this time. The first GPU shrunk down to a 7nm process.

AMD just did Intel one better at Computex. Intel wowed the Taipei crowds on Tuesday with a 28-core Core chip, which the company promised by the end of the year. One day later, on Wednesday, AMD announced Threadripper 2--and at 32 cores and 64 threads, it will easily top what Intel promised. AMD's Threadripper 2 announcement was the highlight of the company's press conference, which didn't have much to offer in the way of new announcements in graphics. AMD did say that its Vega 56 Nano for mini-ITX systems is now shipping.