I have owned an AMD APU that only had its 3D capabilities and hardware video decoding fully supported on the Windows drivers during a couple of years until reaching parity, OpenGL 3.3 instead of 4.1, and no VAAPI.
Thanks for the typical Linux forum answer, some things never change.
Other things however do change. It is pointless to make current decisions on the state of software and drivers from years - let alone decades - ago. Back in the 2000s and early 2010s AMD's OpenGL story on Linux was pathetic, if you really wanted any sort of decent OpenGL on Linux you had to use Nvidia.
Things are very different nowadays and i'm saying that as someone who used to buy Nvidia because of their better OpenGL drivers and especially their Linux support.