I re-updated my Mesa, llvm-amdgpu, libdrm, to mainline and applied the patch to
kernel 3.9.0rc3

Now things seem to be in a better state.  The patch doesn't seem to provide any
change though as I can boot the older 3.8.x kernel and see the same results.

It looks like something changed in Mesa or libdrm for the better.

Oddly enough, after the updates while Gnome 3 loads ok with color tiling, Steam
now shows the corruption Gnome once showed.. (see new screenshot attached)

Sorry i'm kind of all over the place with the testing, I had to update Mesa to
get X working again.