I agree for the most part especially regarding the 2D image quality.
But as for driver issues you could find as many people who had always trouble with ATI and no trouble with nvidia.
Yes Nvidia has bad behaviour back then, against 3dfx for having no 32bit, against STM/PowerVR Kyro, and so on. And yes nVidia did as they were first with T&L but to say they copied it, that's imho bullshit. Or how do you explain that Savage 2000 and NV10 aka Geforce256 came out nearly at the same time? Industrial spy? Maybe you could say that S3TC was copied by others because it was assimilated into DX6. Still sad that Savage 2000 flopped, I had high hopes because Savage 4 were good cards straight up from the beginning in contrast to the Savage3D. which had a few hiccups here and there, but not all were S3 to blame for.
Never had Xabre and XGI V5/V8 because back then they were bad cards for gaming with too many driver (and/or hardware) issues. And also not available here, too. Now they are also too rare to get one for cheap just to satisfy my curiosity. Also S3/Via Chrome, which I had only as IGP (Chrome9HC)