ATI has always had convoluted drivers. I remember way back in the day...before AMD owned them...i was a tech. The driver installs were incredibly huge....100's and 100's of files and if you did something slightly out of order...it was screwed and all these files were left, messing things up even if you wanted to reinstall. THEY WERE A NIGHTMARE!
You'd almost have to reinstall the bloody OS just to get the graphics drivers to work properly. When they installed properly the first time, they seemed to work alright.
With Nvidia...it was like a 5 second install. Boom boom....done. No removal issues either...and complete stability.
Has AMD/ATI...changed how massive the driver installation is, over the years. Doesn't really sound like it.