One of the main reasons it's takes like Nvidia so long to fix a bug is because they try to replicate the bug themselves. If they can't replicate it, then obviously they will take longer to fix it because they won't know exactly what they're fixing.
I had more trouble with my 7600's in SLI on Vista, had that constant driver has stopped responding when playing certain games. I then bought my 8800GTS and uninstalled the 7 series drivers, put the 8800 in and put the 8 series drivers on. Had a few blue screens, but formatted my PC and installed drivers again and it's ran fine ever since. Not one blue screen.
I did read though if you upgrade to an 8 series card from a 6 or 7 series, there is a chance you could have to format your PC to avoid certain issues, which I agree isn't very practical.