New EC regulations could kill off high-end graphics boards
Future graphics boards will be limited in their performance, if new rules from the European Commission come into force.
An analysis of the European Commission's Eco-Design Requirements Lot 3 document, which deals with personal computers and their monitors, by NordicHardware has pointed to a worrying possibility: in the name of efficiency, cards sold in Europe will be limited in memory bandwidth compared to their international versions.
Responding to a tip from an unnamed 'high-level employee' at graphics chip maker AMD, NordicHardware analysed the 325-page document and found a section which splits graphics cards into seven efficiency specifications rated from G1 to G7 - roughly analogous to the letter-based energy efficiency rating system for white goods. Under the terms of the Eco-Design Requirements, products must adhere to minimum efficiency standards in order to be sold in the EU. Those products that don't meet these standards can be removed from sale.
Under the EC's rating system, each level is allowed to draw more power than the level below: G1, which aims at 16-bit memory bus devices, is the most stringent standard, while the top G7 rating applies to devices with 192-bit or higher memory buses. In other words: the vast majority of discrete graphics cards will fall into the G7 rating.
According to NordicHardware, the EC's Eco-Design guidelines will make it near-impossible to release a graphics card with more than 320GB/s of available memory bandwidth - equivalent, according to the site's calculations, to a 384-bit memory bus with memory running at 6,667MHz effective or a 512-bit bus with memory running at 5,0001MHz effective.
Those figures might seem out of reach, but next-generation cards from Nvidia and AMD are expected to reach around those levels - the reason for AMD's leaking of the information to the site. It's even claimed that the rules are strict enough to make Cape Verde and Tahiti - Radeon HD 7700 and Radeon HD 7900 devices - disallowed from sales in the EU when the rules come into force.
For companies who compete on high-power - in both meanings of 'power' - graphics products, it's terrible news: it means that the days of dual-GPU boards with ridiculous power draws may be numbered. Even high-end single-GPU models may be affected, and the restrictions don't take into account computing performance - just nebulous 'efficiency' as rated by an estimation algorithm.
The guidelines are expected to come into force towards the end of 2013 or early 2014, after which companies will have the choice of making cut-down versions of its high-end cards for the European market or to simply stop developing inefficient high-performance boards altogether.
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Also, the graphics card market is largely self-regulating in terms of efficiency - the market demands power-efficient cards since power-hungry cards don't sell as well and get panned (see GTX 400 series). Why regulation in this area is required is beyond me.
Think about it, right now we are willing to accept large ammounts of heat and noise from fans in the name of those extra few FPS. This could push companies like AMD and NVIDIA to rebuild the GPU from the ground up in the name of getting the FPS without the high power draw, heat and noise.
Humans are good at just throwing more power at a problem, Slow FPS = Result, more Ghz's, More RAM, redesign heat sink and then feed with More WATTS. This could see more FPS with less heat and noise, AMD and NVIDIA have more than enough money to invest in some new R&D and the end result will be a better product for us.
I think its about time they took the money we give them when we buy there products and use more of it for R&D and less to pay some boad of directors a stupily high anual bonus.
I welcome this move, if it doesnt work out so well then we can ask a friend to buy one in the US and send it over....
It looks like cards will end up being imported.
If this was worldwide I think it would be a good thing because it would force companies to put a lot of research into making cards more power efficient. (Not saying they don't already or that its even possible) As it is the EU will just get gimped cards.
Why are we part of the EU again?
We will just have to find a way of getting things from the states without paying so much in Import Tax etc.
Think I might have to buy a couple of graphics cards next year and run SLI so I am somewhat safe for a few years.
Royal Mail, UPS, DHL and other courier companies are struggling with demand, after a knee jerk reaction to an EU ban on high performance PC. It is estimated that some deliveries will take months to catch up, as a 4000% increase in the sales of graphics cards and other PC components has been reported.
People have taken to rioting on the streets to protest this new legislation and crime has increased due to thieves specifically targeting high end graphics components, as supply begins to outweigh demand."
Shares in the Dixons Group have increased, due to stores such as PC world still having a supply of high performance graphics cards. DSG have already increased their already high component costs by 1000%, to maximise profit in this time. Our analysts believe DSG still have this stock, because most enthusiasts would rather shop online due to lesser costs and superior customer service.
In other news, console users have named this day 'Victory Day' as they now believe that they can have an edge over PC gamers - something that has previously eluded them due to the fixed hardware within a console.
EA have said they will no longer release Battlefield 6 in Europe due to these issues - the chairman of EA said provided this comment in an exclusive interview with us:
"Now that the citizens of the EU have computers with the graphical capabilities of a toaster, we will no longer be shipping Battlefield 6 to Europe. The engine that powers the game cannot be supported by the restricted cards. In short, what's the point? To give EU citizens something to do, we will be rereleasing Battlefield 3, along with another 20 expansion packs"
The story continues
They should be focusing on what is still the weakest link in the energy efficiency chain, we are still burning coal and oil to generate power :?
They should focus on house insulation, solar panel, stores / offices that don't swithc their light off outside of opening hours, etc.
+ Rep. My sides hurt!
I would hope that someone actually stops to think about this. If not; US imports are going to get a hell of a lot more common, which will probably lead to further EU legislation to try and prevent "inefficient" graphics cards being pulled in. The only way I see this working is if they release dramatically under-clocked cards, then just provide a warranty that allows for it to be clocked up to the normal limit, or we're only going to get middle to low-end GPUs from now on.
This I learned in 2 minuted of "This surely can't be right?" research.
The only document that NH is able to reference is a report that states a PC as "3 GHz processor (or
correspondingly), built-in graphics card, 512 MB RAM and 80 GB HDD" This report was written in 2007, for a directive from 2005. And I understand that directive was abandoned.
The correct documentation includes sentences such as (When referring to a review of the guidelines that will be understaken)
"The review should in particular assess, in the light of new technologies entering the market, the possibility of improving the energy consumption targets and reducing or eliminating the energy allowances in particular for graphics processing units (GPUs)."
So in one two minute bit of research we've gone from the EU completely killing the market for high end graphics cards to the discussion that the rules may be removed from GPUs at some point.
Seems to me that NH has done a bit of sensationalist scaremongering.
It's probably good that these regulations get publicised while they are still being worked on, but I think we need all the facts before we can start moaning about the EU.
Even with 10 speakers and a sub blasting music, and my PC running Prime64 and Furmark, my whole room doesn't draw more than 2.5A from the wall.
Bad idea. I did that, and I suffer massive amounts of micro stutter, it just does not work as well as a single high-end card, good if you can get it for cheap, but awful if you're paying full price and using cheaper cards.
Wow. This enviro-fascist bullshit is really getting to the levels of implausible stupidity.
Exactly what I was going to suggest! Unlock tool/BIOS/special drivers (download only)
If not, AMD will be sh!tting themselves.
LOL - The Dixon's one is pretty hilarious.
I thought the general order was, do research then publish rather than the other way around. I guess you can't beat sensationalism for clicks.
As for not waiting for the EC to respond, I can only guess you've never tried to contact the EC. I'm expecting the response time to be measured in weeks, not days, if previous performance is anything to go by.
For reference a current 680 has 192gb of mem bandwidth, 320gb is a good 128 gb away sounds like alot of a gap tbh.
580 has 192gb of mem bandwidth, 480 was 173gb of memory bandwidth. so things have not changed much in recent releases.
AMD have been pushing memory bandwidth heavily in recent years though,
5870 was at 156gb of memory bandwidth
5970 was at 230gb of mem bandwidth
6970 was at 175gb of memory bandwidth
7970 is at 264gb of memory bandwidth
all at stock speeds i dont have the time to include overclocked versions.
There is no 300gb card on the market if the 2 7970s on a single card we may see it hit that and above i guess.
Really though it should be done on total power draw for the card thats how most electronic items are rated for there effienciency from the A to F bands.
At the minute in the graphics market you have Nvidia reducing Temps and Power usage with increased performance and AMD increasing tempts power and performance. A total reverse turn around from the old days where most AMD cards were pretty frugal under load. ( ignoring the 4890 lol )
IIRC there was some testing into microstutter somewhere which basically ended up concluding that SLI doesn't really suffer from it any more and Xfire works itself out with 3 cards.
Not that the AMD solution is really ideal, but it seems this isn't a problem for SLI at least certainly not in my experience, but then it's not 2 "low end" cards I'm running ;)
"Duel" single cards ← made me chuckle
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/97/FrzDuellImBoisDeBoulogneDurand1874.jpg/300px-FrzDuellImBoisDeBoulogneDurand1874.jpg
As if the UK government wasn't capable of doing all that on its own.
It's slightly unfair, but not ridiculously so. I think what you should have have done is looked at the NH article and smelt the same rat I did, and I'm not a tech journalist. It just didn't pass the "make sense" test that I like to apply to situations before engaging my Outrage Drive. The EU may be f***ed up, but even they aren't THAT f***ed up. I just hope that you read the NH article before any of the comments appeared because some of the readers do a good job of debunking the "exclusive".
Brilliant. It's just insane enough to be actually true!
+REP
512-bit bus running at 5,0002MHz linked to rise in cancer!
What nonesense.
Just a thought; Is there anything about high performance servers/clusters? Surely they would fall afoul of some EU efficiency limit thing? (Provided they don't ONLY measure by bus width and speed?)
Not that I am for any of this (I have not read enough about any of it) but wouldn't power at the plug be a better measurement?
Techpowerup has been making charts for that for a while, example:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/HD_7970_Toxic_6_GB/29.html
The 7970 for example is actually more efficient than the 7750, so based on common sense the 7970 would get the better energy efficiency rating than the 7750, yet the EU wants to take memory bandwidth as an indication of efficiency and slap the 7970 with the worse rating than the 7750 due to the higher memory bandwidth?
Power consumption would become another selling point, because lower power consumption would use less of your quota, so you can have more things. Anyways, as Guinevere pointed out, it's probably not happening.
If they had a clue what the hell they were talking about then they may have implemented this method...which is far more understandable, and I'd be reasonably happy with that! Or even if they imposed an extra 'tax' like they do with CO2 efficiency ratings for car tax.....but this 'memory bandwidth' idea is like saying cars with more seats or a larger boot are less efficient.....I mean come on!!!!!
Yes only 20% of the power reaches your house the rest is lost in waste!!
Did u know that 15 of the biggest shipping cargo ships produce the same polution as all the cars in the world put together for 1 year.
1 millin tons of sulfer goes up every year because of these ships!!
This. Except this does not only apply to the UK Government as well, but also my own (German Government) and quite likely many others too.
Sorry, you are wrong. They made reference to the report. NordicHardware got a recent tip from an AMD exec that states they are worried. They state in their article that they are using those documents as an example on the regulations the person who leaked the info was worried about.
So really, graphics cards are not a big problem, clearly they should be regulating the x factor.
It's not ridiculously unfair. You checked a pdf which nordic hardware now state is not the source of the article. I have looked at it also (albeit a couple of skims) and it seems to be a report on the environmental and energy impact of various computing devices and monitors. It doesn't seem to contain any information which lends credence to or can act as a basis for the article. So I don't know how you can say that it seemed to backup nordics claims. Neither article provides any context that this is a very small part of what seems to be a massively encompassing initiative on energy reduction across many devices. This gives the impression that the eurocrats decided to pull graphics cards out of their arses as something that wastes energy. Nor do either of you state at what stage "lot 3" is at. Which seems to be a working documents/consultation forum. This looks like basically a drafting/consultation with various experts and industry types as well as creating the documents. There are documentssuch as this on the web which does describe constraining graphics card power. However it also says
Frankly who knows what impact the directive will have. But including things like its in a draft and consultation phase or that laws may not have a significant impact on a graphics card functionality don't stir up as much controversy or clicks.
So I maintain that you saw or were pointed to a sensationalist and narrow scoped article, did little fact checking, re-purposed it for bit-tech and didn't bother to wait for the only bit of fact checking you did do. Also so what if it takes weeks, I'd rather see something that has been substantiated than read what is essentially a roumour from some guy at AMD (the head cleaner for all we know) that says he's worried about a new law that doesn't exist yet.
I agree. I don't usually subscribe to conspiracy theories, however when it comes to unneeded legislation, it's often clear that we're seeing the fruits of lobbying efforts at work.
Big energy companies are the only ones who stand to benefit from forcing consumers to use low-energy devices. They still get to charge their 'standing charges' (essentially an arbitrary payment simply for the privilege of being a customer), while having to expend less money to actually make electricity, and having to invest less heavily in expansion of their capacity or transition to renewable sources.
Whilst I realize the bias at work (this is a hardware forum) you are surely deluding yourselves as to why this is an issue above a lot of other things.
For example:
a 42 inch LCD TVs power consumption is 120 Watts when ON (http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007IYVUBY/ref=asc_df_B007IYVUBY10157554?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&tag=googlecouk06-21&linkCode=asn&creative=22206&creativeASIN=B007IYVUBY).
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GBs power consumption is 115 when IDLE, and up to 468 Watts when in Futuremark (http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1921/12/)
Whats more is these massive high end cards really are not required at all. They are nice to have sure, but when it comes to energy efficiency im afraid the first thing you are going to focus upon is the ridiculously inefficient luxury item.
Now whether they are targeting the right cards is another matter, but the fact they are targeting graphics cards is of absolutely no surprise whatsoever to me. Its good that they are trying to reduce the energy people waste because frankly not alot of people give a damn, and if it wasn't for people doing things like this we might not have awesomely efficient TVs or Fridges like we do now.
Sorry to say it but the tech we use really is the one of the final frontiers in terms of wasting energy :) The alternative is for them to put a massive tax on these graphics cards I guess which they could use to fund green initiatives.
edit: oh, and whilst performance is related to power, essentially the planet doesnt care about how powerful your pc is :)
http://www.confusedaboutenergy.co.uk/index.php/domestic-fuels/fuel-prices
Welcome to the hell you built yourselves, it's only going to get worse.
Show me a currently sold graphics card consuming that amount of power in IDLE. You can't. Let me link this :
http://tpucdn.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_690/images/power_idle.gif
Nothing to see there, most current highend graphics cards would fit in the G5 category of this regulation.
Bit tech lists every graphics card it wants to compare... all of those are idling over 65W aren't they ?
edit: Grape Flavour, America is a big problem in the energy consumption problem. Gas prices being so cheap is a big problem. Forcing companies to be more efficient in their designs isn't a nanny state ideal, its progress towards tackling a global problem.
edit: why would you even link that, I just wikipediad that 400 series and they were released in 2010!
Ah so it is :)
There you go then, that lists several graphics cards with an idle power consumption of over 65W :)
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295
NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2
Ignoring the crossfire ones as I guess they dont really count.
Depends how the power measuring is done. Bit-tech don't state their method. Tech power up claim to monitor the pci express power connectors and lanes which gives the power usage of the card only. There is a huge discrepancy between the two though.
Edit: Ninja'd by previous posts.
Its all irrelevant really until a benchmark procedure is detailed by the EU commission.
Newer graphics cards drop their frequencies right down, my GPU is currently at 50MHz, memory at just over 100. Older graphics cards that you can't buy new anymore didn't clock down so low, if at all.
Also both those cards are 2 GPU's in SLI.
Bit tech have stated in the past that they use a measurement from the wall, so it includes everything the power supply is connected to. the PCIe method would just measure the card itself.
1) as other said, the regulation is talking about the graphics card idle power consumption, not system power consumption. They also defined what they count for that yearly total - 9.6 hours idling, 1.2 hours in sleep mode, rest of the day computer turned off. That means that G7 category with a yearly power consumption of 225 kWh would mean 64.2W maximum power consumption in idle mode.
2) That chart is from the latest reviews, so i am not sure why are you complaining.
3) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295, NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GX2 - sure, yeah they eat a lot of power... And your point is ? Both those cards are very old.
The title of the article should be changed to "New EC regulations could kill off out dated and inefficient graphics boards" :D
G1 34 kWh 9.7 W
G2 54 kWh 15.4 W
G3 69 kWh 19.6 W
G4 100 kWh 28.5 W
G5 133 kWh 38.0 W
G6 166 kWh 47.4 W
G7 225 kWh 64.2 W
So if we take the techpowerup values as a base for these comparisons, then except GTX590 and GTX480 everything else fits in G6 category power consumption limit. Add HD5970 to that list and everything else fits in G5 category. And many of the cards will be able to be in the G4 or even G3 category .
If it makes no difference whats the problem with setting a limit?
The issue is that initial wording by NH suggested that this was a load power limit - and in that case 65W would be very, very low.
:'(
The bigger unmentioned problem that we all are having on both sides of the pond are bureaucrats inside the government who believe they know best. They don't have product history or the actual numbers in use at any given time. Though they will speculate, count imaginary beans, pull a BS number out from their nether regions, and tell that you cannot have a product you desire. It's all for the public good Jeremy Bentham says, you sulk and have it no more. My 7850 is a far more capable and efficient card than my old 1900XTX but private industry cannot know best, only bureaucrats do. Ask them they'll tell how and why you are too stupid to choose.