Having owned an X600, X800, X850XT, X1900XT, 3850, 4870, 7850, RX580, and 5700XT, I can say I have rarely if ever had driver issues with ATI/AMD.
Historically, I did use nvidia when I wanted to do native linux on desktop/media center, because their closed source drivers were supported much better (even FreeBSD had hardware media decoding support). This was before nouveau.
And yet - here I am - having owned probably close to as many AMD/ATI graphics cards as you and I want to never go back due to their drivers. The 4850/4870 launch left me with trauma. I've mainly used my cards on Windows. Since I've been using my 980 Ti and 2070 Super - I've not really had any issues with Nvidia. I'll get a 3080 instead of a 6800 XT - presuming supply is available. I'm super hesitant to go back to AMD. Been burned too many times!
I bought HD4850 on release and had no trouble on Windows.
Linux support wasn't there on release (unlike these days) but came quite fast, a matter of weeks IIRC, with open drivers. Support has been there on release for all my newer AMD cards. All cards still work, and are still well-supported by the open drivers.
In contrast, all my NVIDIA cards from before that ended up as dead hardware, and were a nightmare while it worked, with the moody NVIDIA blob drivers.
Historically, I did use nvidia when I wanted to do native linux on desktop/media center, because their closed source drivers were supported much better (even FreeBSD had hardware media decoding support). This was before nouveau.