If your computer has this video chipset, you will probably wonder if it is a rebranded Savage or Unichrome chipset, or something. 2D performance by default is godawful, as bad as completely unaccelerated graphics, if not worse. Dragging a window across the screen will create artifacts galore.
But put 'nomodeset' in at the boot prompt, and you have better 2D performance under Linux than under Windows XP.
This works. But disabling KMS is not desirable,since it is supposedly the way of the future. Does anyone know what the root cause of this issue is, and whether I can make X deliver good performance without disabling KMS?