Everyone is missing the most ridiculous part of the article: The EU wants to cap MEMORY BANDWIDTH, not just power consumption.
The commission wants to stop dedicated graphics cards of group G7 from going above 320 GB/s - that is in theory a memory bus at 384-bit connected to memory operating at 6667 MHz or 512-bit with 5001 MHz. This is definitely within reach for the next generation graphics cards. Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition currently has a bandwidth of 288 GB/s with a 384-bit memory bus and 6000 MHz memory. For notebooks the limit will be only 225 GB/s.
No, they don't. In fact they EXEMPT cards with high memory bandwidths from this recommendation if they are in a high end system.
"1.1.3. Category D desktop computers and integrated desktop
computers meeting all of the following technical parameters are
exempt from the requirements specified in points 1.1.1 and
1.1.2:
(a) a minimum of six physical cores in the central processing
unit (CPU); and
(b) discrete GPU(s) providing total frame buffer bandwidths
above 320 GB/s; and
(c) a minimum 16GB of system memory; and
(d) a PSU with a rated output power of at least 1000 W. "
Curse my decision to go quad core.
Wait, I don't live in the EU. Hopefully we'll dump O-bum-a and be free of such nonsense for another four years at least.
Edit: They do realise that this means that anyone who wants a decent GPU will now go with a power hungry, resource eating monster of a machine, right?