Otherwise we may remove the only console for a nomodeset system.
We became more aggressive in our kicking with
commit 
e188719a2891f01b3100dca4ae3a055fb5a7ab52
Author: Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch>
Date:   Tue Jun 12 11:28:17 2012 +0200
    drm/i915: kick any firmware framebuffers before claiming the gtt
Reported-and-tested-by: monnier@iro.umontreal.ca
Bugzilla: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=54615
Signed-off-by: Chris Wilson <chris@chris-wilson.co.uk>
Cc: stable@vger.kernel.org # v3.6
Signed-off-by: Daniel Vetter <daniel.vetter@ffwll.ch>
 
                goto put_gmch;
        }
 
-       i915_kick_out_firmware_fb(dev_priv);
+       if (drm_core_check_feature(dev, DRIVER_MODESET))
+               i915_kick_out_firmware_fb(dev_priv);
 
        pci_set_master(dev->pdev);