
Debian 6.0 is actually the newest distro I've tried that doesn't spam dmesg (even though it should use modeset by default) and has good 2D/3D performance with the open drivers.
There's a user patch to stop polling the video ports after three unsuccessful tries, but is that the best option for now?
echo N > /sys/module/drm_kms_helper/parameters/poll seems to be hit and miss for me..