Irrlicht's FBO system must have been written long before OGL 3.0. Now my nvidia card is fine with the EXT version of FBO because nvidia is a lot more lenient on the specifications and I was allowed 3 RGBA8 bit RTTs together with a 32bit float single channel RTT for depth in a 128bit MRT. However ATI's implementation is a lot more conservative and does not allow mixed color attachment formats (because EXT spec doesn't require ATI to do so).
Now that FBOs are core, I would request using the ARB extension whenever possible. As it guarantees mixed format attachments and even MIXED DIMENSION ATTACHMENTS!
Here is a quote from stackoverflow from an answer guy who had problems with ATi cards.
I will obviously try to provide a fix myself (if you want it fast do it yourself), but I'm asking for it to be done in irrlicht 1.8 for the benefit of other irrlicht'ers.What additional functionality does this extension include over EXT_framebuffer_object?
Currently we incorporate the following layered extensions:
* EXT_framebuffer_multisample
* EXT_framebuffer_blit
* EXT_packed_depth_stencil
As well as the following features:
* Permit attachments with different width and height (mixed
dimensions)
* Permit color attachments with different formats (mixed
formats).
* Render to 1 and 2 component R/RG formats that are provided
via the ARB_texture_rg extension. L/A/LA/I will be
left for a separate (trivial) extension.