I use gentoo sources, and have just updated from .28-r5 to .29-r5 both using ati-drivers 9.8. glxgears dropped from 1850 to 1500, however vmware guest OSes appear to be loading twice as fast (used vmware-modules-1.0.0.23 with 28 and 1.0.0.23-r1 with 29).
Interestingly ati-drivers 9.7 with .29 returned 1800fps on glxgears, but really I don't care much about 3D so I havent gone back. I'm just wondering how other ati and vmware users are finding the kernel versions, and in particular if you're having luck with .30-r4?
