[conspire] supported graphics cards

[Rick Moen]

Afterthought:

> Some hardware just isn't a great choice, and apparently a lot of people
> bought these units thinking they'd make great low-power DVR units
> running XMBC, and were unpleasantly surprised by the consequences of
> them being cheap and peculiar hardware.  
> 
> FWIW, it's reported that the unsupported beta builds of OpenELEC (_not_
> running fglrx), a leading XBMC distribution, have for two years given
> excellent results wih AMD E350 Zacate, so that in turn suggests what
> your best non-fglrx solution should be:  leading-edge X.org software.

First hit if you Web-search 'amd e350 linux' is
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_fusion_e350&num=1, 
dated March 16, 2011 (just before that chipset's public release),
where paragraph 2 gives us useful background for what's going on:

  If you are using the open-source driver, for now and the foreseeable
  future the UVD3 [Unified Video Decoder] engine is rendered useless. 
  AMD has not provided open-source support or public documentation on 
  any generation of the UVD engine due to fear it may compromise 
  their Digital Rights Management support under other operating systems 
  (Microsoft Windows). 

So, the problem isn't the set of Radeon cores in the embedded GPU, but
rather the secret-sauce hardware-based implementation of H.264 / VC-1 /
DivX / Xvid / Blu-Ray 3D video codecs in in, which has been not only
been treated as secret but also (probably) deliberately obfuscated in
order for AMD to suck up to Our Lords in Hollywood and protect their
ability to control what MS-Windows users are permitted to do.  As of the
article's publication date two years ago, OpenGL 2.1 was the best that
could be done in the way of 3D acceleration by the released open-source
X.org / Mesa combination, whereas AMD Catalyst (proprietary fglrx add-on
software) gets you OpenGL 3.3/4.1.

The article notes that the UVD3 engine's native programming interface,
X-Video Bitstream Acceleration API (XvBA) is being extended as a 'Hey,
use this to lock down what your HD viewers are permitted to do' method,
but that no media application is so far using it on any OS.  (Note that 
the UVD is invoked in typical chipsets that include it for 1080p video, 
which is exactly the HD line in the sand where Our Lords in Hollywood 
have decreed that they don't want users to have any control over
content.

Anyway, my overall point is that the difficulty adding good X11 _with 3D_
in open source -- note: specifically with 'UVD enabled' GPUs from AMD,
but presumably not others -- is explained by the Hollywood/DRM angle.

I would avoid any hardware specifically designed with DRM handcuffs in
mind (unless / until it's been thoroughly reverse-engineered).

And my other point is that one obvious Web-search brought these facts to
the surface.  (People checking out hardware before buying it can thus
benerfit from such searches.)