Intel declares Clover Trail Atom processor a "no Linux" zone (ars technica)

Surely you mean, you're setting it to low via variable in a small startup script. I used this with HD 4650 to reduce noise with FOSS driver, as it defaulted to performance rather than medium. In Console mode low was fine.
If you need working dynamic power management, there's the AMD Catalyst driver there's an article on Phoronix explaining the jam on dynamic powermanagement, which summarises hacker-AMD thread on such.
This sort of whingeing, is just punishing a company that's trying to do the right thing, a rival forces Reverse Engineering.