Jared,

> 200 fps in a window (ie not full screen?) seems low.. with my Radeon 
> 9800 Pro I see ~2100fps, and with my new Radeon 9250 I'm getting around 
> 920fps.
> What kind of hardware is this?

Ok, my fault. I forgot to disable the DRM_DEBUG option in the kernel. 
Now I get something like 200 fps full screen, which seems reasonable, 
and I have reverted to a normal ~ 85 % idle CPU (syslog was consuming 
much time writing DRI events). I have an old M7 mobile Radeon — r100 
series, I think, not a very performant hardware as today standards go.

However, if I set up things so that 'radeon_dri.so' is loaded by Xfree 
at start (whether or not AIGLX is enabled), I get that black screen. 
I'll try to poke around.

I am perfectly willing to do whatever fixes are needed, but I simply 
lack any doc on the chipset, nor, when I sought out three or four months 
ago, was I able to find any around.

Thanks anyhow for your help!
Vincent