"Genuine question but when it comes to general purpose computing (every day use cases such as Windows, Linux, people playing games), what, really, is the alternative?"
Us complaining and boycotting the hardware until AMD and Intel getting rid of sleazy things like PSP and ME
After all, consumer stuff like Windows and games really doesn't need these in the first place. It is absurd that it is on the i-series of processors.
I am sad this happened to AMD. I much rather it happened to Nvidia GPUs because they are very open-source unfriendly. It might even spur them to release the open-firmware so that our Nouveau driver can at least function well.