Radeon HD 3870 open source driver support?

[Dennis Jacobfeuerborn]

samuel wrote:
>> The person was referring to the open source nv driver. You are
>> referring to a closed source driver. That's the difference.
>>
>
> and let's be honest... if you have to buy a card now, why wouldn't you
> support companies that actually intend to release specs like we have
> been asking for years?
> Even if the resulting driver, or the hardware of that company would be
> slightly slower than the closed source competitor
> just my 2 cents,
> S.

Define "slightly slower". If you actually work on a Linux desktop the whole 
day no 2D acceleration can be quite a pain in the butt. What I'm basically 
trying to do is to satisfy three requirements:

1) The card needs to be powerful enough to be able to nip off and boot into 
Windows for gaming every once in a while.
2) The card needs to be useful enough under Linux for daily prolonged 
desktop use.
3) If possible the driver for the card should be open-source.

 From what I've read on this thread and readonhd.org it looks like rv670 
basic support is there and acceleration will arrive "soonish" (depending on 
the release of the specs which seems to be next on the list of data to be 
released).

I'll probably go and get a 3870 in the next few days. If 2D performance 
proves to be too slow I could still use the on-board chip for the desktop 
and only switch to the Radeon when I'm running Windows until the 2D 
acceleration arrives in the coming months.

Regards,
   Dennis