Old graphics drivers usually have severe stability issues, so Mozilla blacklists them. You need to update to more recent ones -- anything after around June 2010 should do. Check out about:support for more information. (Note that if you're on Linux Mozilla only whitelists the proprietary nvidia driver IIRC, since all the open source drivers have issues.)

I don't think chrome has blacklisted anything yet, but from what I hear Google's looking at doing it.

In general, the problem is with your computer, and not with your browser or the demos.