Toby: ATI had an other, far more important reason for decent OpenGL drivers: Apple :-)
Earlier it was NV doing the graphic card job, but recently, they were kicked out quite a bit on the mainstream systems. And IntelMacs even do only use ATI (beside Intel GMA 950 which is a nice, shader 3 chip as well. More powerfull than a GF6200 which would have drained more power)
OEJ: Yes HWTnL is the first thing the driver tries and after that it has 2 fallback steps till it totally fails.
Earlier it was NV doing the graphic card job, but recently, they were kicked out quite a bit on the mainstream systems. And IntelMacs even do only use ATI (beside Intel GMA 950 which is a nice, shader 3 chip as well. More powerfull than a GF6200 which would have drained more power)
OEJ: Yes HWTnL is the first thing the driver tries and after that it has 2 fallback steps till it totally fails.