Will EU Regulations Effectively Ban High-End Video Cards? 303
New submitter arun84h writes "An update to an energy law, which will apply in the European Union, has the power to limit sale of discrete components deemed 'energy inefficient.' GPU maker AMD is worried this will affect future technology as it becomes available, as well as some current offerings. From TFA: 'According to data NordicHardware has seen from a high level employee at AMD, current graphics cards are unable to meet with these requirements. This includes "GPUs like Cape Verde and Tahiti", that is used in the HD 7700 and HD 7900 series, and can't meet with the new guidelines, the same goes for the older "Caicos" that is used in the HD 6500/6600 and HD 7500/7600 series. Also "Oland" is mentioned, which is a future performance circuit from AMD, that according to rumors will be used in the future HD 8800 series. What worries AMD the most is how this will affect future graphics cards since the changes in Lot 3 will go into effect soon. The changes will of course affect Nvidia as much as it will AMD.' Is this the beginning of the end for high-end GPU sales in the EU?"
The report in question. Each performance category of hardware has a power draw ceiling; in this case, regulators are increasing the minimum bus bandwidth for the highest performance category, bumping all hardware on the market into the next lowest. Unfortunately, no current hardware or planned hardware on the high end will come under the power draw ceiling for that category.
Just ship with a low-draw driver (Score:5, Interesting)
Naturally anyone who cares will install the real driver, so the law-breaking is on the part of the consumer, not AMD or Nvidia. Seems like a simple workaround as long as you can say 'it's the consumer breaking the law, not us'
Re:Just ship with a low-draw driver (Score:1, Interesting)
Or just let the consumer buy online from a non-EU retailer.
Low-draw cards should be simple enough to make for average users and office computers, gamers will just need to order their cards from outside the EU.
No! (Score:5, Interesting)
'Will EU Regulations Effectively Ban High-End Video Cards?'
"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word 'no'".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_Law_of_Headlines [wikipedia.org]
Problem? Sell them as "heating equipment" (Score:1, Interesting)
We still have regular light bulbs sold in EU, they are sold as "heating devices". I think same could apply to GPUs.
This is a right wing troll (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is deliberate counter propaganda that shows up more often when there is some big scandal about business doing something stupid that screws a lot of people. In this case I guess it is the compounding pharmacy that caused the meningitis epidemic. The corrupt criminal organization calling itself the "International Academy of Compounding Pharmacists" successfully lobbied Congress to defeat attempts to regulate their industry. Now there are over 200 meningitis cases and 15 deaths, and the number of exposed patients may be higher because more drugs were tainted.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444657804578052972230404046.html?mod=googlenews_wsj [wsj.com]
If you want to be paranoid about something, worry about corrupt politically connected businesses risking your life for profit. It actually happens. Not that it often ends up on Slashdot, as opposed to right wing scare tactics.
Regulate idle power instead (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IANAL but looking at the draft regulations... (Score:4, Interesting)
This exemption is for servers and parallel computing setups with multiple discrete GPUs. The only single cards which hit the 320GB/s bandwidth mark are the dual GPU cards, which is just two regular cards in Crossfire / SLI on one card. Top line Core i7 still only have 4 cores; You need Xeon or high-end Bulldozer CPUs to qualify (cores per CPU, remember).
This isn't a gamer's exemption. This is for server farms and universities running clusters.
Re:Just ship with a low-draw driver (Score:2, Interesting)
I agree. The power draw of video cards has gotten childish and wasteful. The last PC I built needed a 500 watt power supply just to be "stable" using lower end parts. ("Green" edition HDD, single slot non-vacuum cleaner video card, etc) That's just terribly inefficient. My laptops are all using 65 watt external supplies... And they are faster in everything but graphics.
It's time somebody nip these guys... When PCs are using more power than refrigerators, there's a serious problem with priorities. (XBox 360 is even worse)
Re:Betteridge's Law of Headlines (Score:4, Interesting)
GPU gained more than 20x work per power used in the past 5 years. Should a 5 year old 50watt GPU be pushed over a 200watt modern GPU? Also, most modern GPUs are idle most of the time. Idle power draw is the overwhelming average load. Even when loading the GPU in games, most games can't push GPUs. Most of my games leave my GPU over 50% idle and I have an "old" ATI6950. I've been playing WoW with "Ultra" settings and that's only putting me about 8% GPU load.
I also have Civ5, BC2, and a few other games that can actually load the GPU, and even then mine is in the 60%-80% range.
My guess is the biggest benefit to lower peak TDP GPUs is not needing as much cooling to handle peak load. If GPUs really are idle most of the time, then it's mostly wasted potential. Game reviews will show little difference between high and low end and people will gravitate towards the lower end to save money. No point in forcing regulation when the market should fix itself.
Anyway, "efficiency" has been a huge priority for the past many years. Datacenters are wanting power efficient number crunchers for a while now.
Re:Just ship with a low-draw driver (Score:5, Interesting)
As a practical matter, most laws like this are only directly relevant to companies importing more than a single item for resale -- particularly large corporations like Asda importing items by the shipping crate. The EU doesn't have the resources to go out and inspect the inventory of every Chinese immigrant selling goods straight from Shenzhen from his crowded store in outer London or Amsterdam, let alone scrutinize every item purchased from the US. As a practical matter, it doesn't... it just requires companies like Asda to certify the compliance of the goods they sell, and knows that it can keep 99.9% of noncompliant goods out of most consumers' hands without lifting a finger or paying the salary of a single customs agent.
Here's an easy experiment: go find a small, independent store that sells imported computer parts purchased from Shenzhen. Say, ATX tower cases or USB hubs, owned by a guy who emigrated from China and has family members purchasing for him back in China. Buy the coolest-looking case with a brand name you've never heard of, and a random USB hub. Take them home, and scrutinize the legal compliance of each. If you see a FCC ID (or its European equivalent) etched into the circuit board, look it up... and feign surprise when you discover that it's either associated with some item that hasn't even been sold in 3 years, or was completely made up. Don't forget to check the compliance of things like the power supply, too. More likely than not, both items are technically illegal in the EU, US, or both... and nobody really cares, unless they're a retailer the size of Amazon or Walmart/Asda. Then, they care a lot.
That said, a law that sets standards that aren't already achievable on the assumption that consumers can just ignore it if necessary is a bad law.
Debunked... (Score:3, Interesting)
This came up on Overclock.net on the 12th, which spread into a large debate and was looked into by a member rather well. This is what he found:
"It's the journalist who is trolling. It's baseless nonsense with a sensationlist title. And he caught most of you hook line and sinker.
Just a few things you could notice if you take a moment to think it through. ..." with no explicit quote. Who said that? Why would they be worried about a report that hasn't resulted in any actual proposal.
All directives, proposals, studies and reports of EU law are publically available. All data must be openly published. So he would be able to link to any proposals.
Therefore "NordicHardware has seen exclusive information about a new energy law that will apply within the EU" is bullcrap.
Only link is to a report from 2007 which looks at possible means of reducing CO2 emissions.
That "buffer bandwidth" table in the middle of the NordicHardware article is based on data collected in 2006.
Report was part of an ongoing study but it hasn't been active since 2008.
The EU directive that the report relates to was recast in 2009, so it's not even valid reference material.
New directive took until December 2011 before publishing any report. You can read it here http://www.meerp.eu/documents.htm [meerp.eu]
"AMD is worried
Contrary to "Graphics card energy consumption has been rising steadily over the last couple of years" GPUs are actually getting more efficient.
"We definitely feel that restrictions that lead to more efficient hardware is a good thing, but it needs to be done properly with the affected companies being involved in the discussion." Journalist obviously doesn't realise that 110 stakeholders (affected companies) were present at the Meerp stakeholder meeting of 9 September 2011. Journalist also doesn't realise that AMD is listed as a stakeholder since at least 11 July 2011.
"According to a report published in August this year the current roadmaps [from AMD and Nvidia] does not support the new requirements..." If it was published, then why not link to it?"
This was provided by member WiSK on Overclock.net... citing my source since I didn't do the research. Don't worry about this sensationalism...