I did some more digging into these flickering problems - the manpage gave me a possible solution:
option hdmi "all" seems to choose DVI-D_1 - this is the device xrandr shows for hdmi, but it causes the flickering - so I chose option hdmi "DVI-I_1" and the display works fine.
Sound does not play though - no error messages in syslog, dmesg or Xorg.0.log:
Code:
aplay -l
card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: ATI HDMI [ATI HDMI]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
aplay -D plughw:1,3 /usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav
Playing WAVE '/usr/share/sounds/alsa/Front_Center.wav' : Signed 16 bit Little Endian, Rate 48000 Hz, Mono
It's just strange I don't get errors messages right away. And aplay runs fine using plughw:0,0 (the front jack out connected to me headphones.)
I guess I'll revert back to fglrx with the very same kernel and check if sound works like this... hdmi audio used to work on other kernels with fglrx