i have no idea what is the problem with ati drivers. I heard about stuff from the past not for 3000 and 4000 series.
I had good ati rage of fury 128 (before gerforce one) and it worked flawlessly.
now i have 4850 and it works without glitch. even tough i have crappy single core 3200 i run most games on maxed settings (well. batman is just high settings as well as empire)
at 1650x1080
no trouble with drivers whatsover.

I guess I've just been unlucky then. But the HD 3850 I recently replaced, while still capable of running the latest games, pretty much had nothing but glitches come the end. The drivers got worse and worse for the most part.
Even the Rage Pro I had back in the day crapped up with Open GL and left me with the then blurry as hell Direct X.