Driver install order affects stability?

[ChetCV]

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?

 

[SciFiMan]

Not that I've ever noticed. But do you have the latest BIOS and chipset drivers? And make sure you uninstall the old video drivers first, then the latest. Is your sound onboard? You could also try dropping back to Cat 6.11 or something. Does your system run normally in Excel, email, web surfing, watching DVD movies, etc? Only crashes in games?

 

[DukeDave]

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.

 

[MikeGR7]

I am not sure about DX installing last. I thought it was better to instal DX after mainboard and then input and output devices such as controllers, printers, mouse etc. You've read this somewhere or in your experience? Please answer this people.

 

[DukeDave]

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.

 

[ChetCV]

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.

Thank you everyone for all your responses.

I have the lastest BIOS and drivers. I have tested 3 different driver versions with no luck finding a stable config.

Right now it crashes most when I launch a game but it has crashed on some occasion when I launched WMP or WinDVD. That could be related to DX9 possibly installed prior to hardware driver.

I don't think I installed everything in the right order then. I know I installed the chipset first then then the vid card but I don't know when I installed my DX9.0c. I will uninstall my Ati drivers, then reinstall my chipset followed by vid drivers then DX9.0c and pray this works.

It sucks to have a awesome C2D E6600 rig only to have it crash daily.