There have been many news reports lately about ATI/AMD releasing specs for their chips and open source drivers. But, past experience has shown that there is often "less than meets the eye" on things like this.

I have long since abandoned ATI video on Linux, due to the limits of their Linux offerings. So, I can't test it out myself.

Is anyone here working with the new drivers, or familiar with the specs/code they released? Any insight into HTPC relevant features? Theoretically, open specs could allow for XvMC or VAAPI implementations for ATI GPUs.

Hi, AMD released the FULL registers mapping and specs for some of their chip families (newer ones) regarding 2D capabilities and they are expected (and they have declared they will) to release the 3D bits in the following months. The opensource community expect working drivers for the first half of 2008. If that will be the case i'm SO gonna buy a new mobo. Cheers.

Yeah, I'm watching with interest all the activity on the ATI drivers.

Because of the weak Linux support in the past, I avoided ATI cards. But, if they get decent XvMC or VAAPI support, that will definitely change. I'll gladly move from the closed NVidia drivers to an open driver.

Actually, I guess I do have an ATI GPU, in my old G4 Mac Mini. It's not fast enough to work as an HD MythTV frontend under Mac OS. But, with XvMC drivers, it would make a nice Linux HD frontend.