These days a lot (most ?) of rendering toolkits are GPU accelerated, including things like your browser - you'd likely hit those issues with other apps as well

These days a lot (most ?) of rendering toolkits are GPU accelerated, including things like your browser - you'd likely hit those issues with other apps as well then. You could hit drivers bugs for sure, but that means in your particular config GL will be worse so you need to test, doubt this translates to a general scenario. I think a lot of people assume because your default GL setup is to use immediate mode to re-render everything at refresh rate that's the only way to do rendering and that's why GL apps get the reputation for being power hungry.