Random quick black screen flicker

I just barely got back to playing SINS as my computer has been dead for over a month now. After repairing/upgrading it, here are my computer's stats:

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500

ASUS P5Q Pro MB

2 GB DDR2 800 RAM

GeForce 7900GTX

I have the latest sound and video drivers installed, as well as my monitor's driver. I'm running on the latest beta driver for SINS. I only played for about 15-20 minutes, but the good news is the game seems stable and no huge problems yet detected. The minor issue that is irritating me though is that at random intervals, usually around every 5-10 seconds, the screen will go black for a fraction of a second leading to a kinda distracting experience. Zooming in and out seems to exacerbate the issue, though I can't guarantee that.

The other question I had pertains to the frigate shipyard. Last I played, I don't remember it having a graphical effect that it now does. Appears as a smoky cloud surrounding ships during construction. This same effect does not occur in the capital ship factory. New graphical feature or very strange bug on my end? Very surprising to me if it's a bug as all the other graphics look perfect aside from the monitor's strange flashing.

Any help appreciated. Thanks.

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kryo

Join Date 05/2003

+458

I have the latest sound and video drivers installed

Which versions, exactly? Also, XP or Vista? The black screen sounds like a driver reset, which was a common issue in nVidia's older Vista drivers.

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178.13 for the GeForce

5.10.0000.5628 for my Realtek HD Audio

Windows XP 32-Bit is my OS.

I'll probably try to play some more tonight to see if the issue is still prevalent and to try and make sure nothing else is occurring. As for the black screen though, keep in mind that my eye can barely see it. It's the regular game playing well, a very quick flash as if something was disrupted for a mere moment and then it's right back to the game playing just fine. A blink of an eye, really. It's only jarring because it's similar to the effect as if the screen is almost stuttering randomly.

Edit: Played for about half an hour and experimented with Bloom on and off as well as the various anti-aliasing options. Though possibly not as frequent, the distracting flashes still occurred. One I remember was right after a save, but trying to get it to happen again by saving did not work. Did not appear to be related to zoom functions either as it happened while watching battles go by and while zipping around the system map. While the game is certainly still playable like this, I sure would like to get rid of the problem altogether.

Edit #2: Well, I think I found the problem. I don't remember running SpeedFan before while this was going on, but I can't be certain. What I can be certain of is that I just played for almost an hour with nary a blip, but as soon as I alt-tabbed, opened SpeedFan and went back in game, they started occurring. Alt-tab again, close SpeedFan, return to game and no issue. I'll report back to this thread if the problem returns, indicating something else was causing it and this was a coincidence, but I think this has fixed it for me.

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