The growth of energy consumption of discrete graphics solutions resisted unless limitations of PCI Express specification and modern power supplies. Level of cards heat could fit through the use of all advanced cooling systems. Often video card manufacturers offer products that take up space in the three expansion slots.
EU authorities in the framework of governing the energy efficiency of European ecosystems are going to severely limit the power consumption of graphics cards. If the new rules are implemented, in 2014, the implementation of some video cards in the EU will be banned because they can not meet the new requirements for energy efficiency.
Draft rules classifies discrete graphics into seven groups, the eldest of whom may not have the memory bandwidth of 320 gigabytes per second. In theory, this corresponds to a 384-bit bus and memory frequency type GDDR5, equal to 6667 MHz QDR, or 512-bit bus and memory frequency 5001 MHz QDR. Not too far from the characteristics of modern graphics cards - Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition has a capacity of 288 gigabytes of memory per second. Note that the laptop will be limited to the capacity of 225 gigabytes per second.
According to the comments of an anonymous AMD source , The Regulation to the current edition question the legitimacy of European sales of many existing graphics solutions: Radeon HD 79xx, Radeon HD 77xx, Radeon HD 7500/7600 and Radeon HD 6500/6600 and future graphics products series Oland. For each class has its own video restrictions on the level of energy consumption, and these products can not meet them. Of course, the problem touches also NVIDIA graphics processors.
The pursuit of stricter environmental legislation has complicated the lives of many companies, implementing and exploiting the products in the EU. Cars every year trying to meet increasingly stringent standards on the content of carbon dioxide in the exhaust, airliners should not create excessive noise. Finally, electronic components must comply with RoHS harmful substances. Now the added headache to video card manufacturers.