Driver install order affects stability?

I have been having stability issues with my Asus x1950Pro. When launching a game the screen goes black and crashes my system or if I can get into a game there are artifacts.

Asus support said that the order of my driver install should be. Chipset driver -> ATi Catalyst 7.1-> Sound Driver. Otherwise I may have stability issues.

It is not the GPU overheating. GPU temp=45. It's not due to insufficent power. OCZ 600W PSU.

I think he's full of it and that I just have bad card. Has anyone had an experience where driver install order for a vid card affected stability?

Most definately.

The order of driver installation I have adopted is one of component importance.

The first drivers to be installed should allways be the motherboard/chipset drivers, everything runs off the motherboard.

The second drivers to be installed should be the video card, this is the next most important component in the system and the one that matters the most for gaming.

The remaining drivers can be installed in any order that you like, if you are using onboard sound the drivers for that are noramally installed with the motherboard, otherwise you would install them later.

Just as a side note, I allways install all hardware before any software and I install the latest version of direct X once I have finished installing all of my hardware, including the mouse, monitor, printer etc.

No I haven't read it anywhere actually, it's in my experience.

I have found that sometimes direct x needs to be reinstalled if you install hardware afterwards, not often but I have had a couple of errors doing it the other way around.