amd64 platform newbie -- what video card for x11?

[Dieter]

> > As for 8500GT - missing xv extension may or may not be a
> > showstopper (but as you mentioned mplayer, it will :-().

The penguins have xv working on ATI up through R500 thanks to
the docs that AMD/ATI have been releasing.  Video decoding
might be problematic on R600 since it is integrated with the
DRM crap which they don't want to document.  They may or may
not find a way to document video decoding on R600.

Also: 3D for R300,400,500  (3D for R600 coming soon.)

"The 3D programming documentation today is 300 pages and is
 made up of a programming guide and register specifications.
 Among the areas covered in this 3D guide are the command
 processor, vertex shaders, fragment shaders, Hyper-Z, and the
 various 3D registers."

Docs are available here:

	http://ati.amd.com/developer/open_gpu_documentation.html
	http://www.x.org/docs/AMD/

http://www.phoronix.com/  is a good place to watch for updates,
(aside from their penguin bias).

My question is: how much of this is generic X11 and how much is
OS specific (BSD vs Linux)?  How long until BSD has xv/xvmc/vaapi
support with no binary-only blobs?