Graphical Issue: Black bars flash on my screen? Suggestions?

[redvandam]

Last time I play Civ black bars started to flash on my screen. The duration in between seems random and the black bars seem to vary from one that takes up 1/4 of the bottom of my screen and 1/2 of the bottom of my screen. The flash is just a flash, half a second or so, but it's noticeable and annoying.

This is only happening with Civ 5. None of my other games are doing this. That leads me to believe it's the game, settings maybe, I just don't know where to start.

I've had this game since release and only ran into this problem 2 days ago. It's run well enough on my computer before this incident.

Did I fry my graphics card or is just something I can fix?

SPECS:

8800GT 512mb
3 gig DDR2
2.67 AMD Athlon Dual Core

 

[tokala]

You should check the temperatures of your card while civving. And yes, this can very well be a (almost) fryed card. You can countercheck by running Furmark for a few minutes, if those artifacts do not appear there, it is most likely a problem with Civ.

 

[redvandam]

I'll try running that program.

Just to update this problem. About a week ago I put all the graphics settings to the default (I had turned a few things up when I got the game) and the black bars went away completely.

I thought I had solved the problems but now the bars are coming back even with the settings on default.

 

[redvandam]

I ran the benchmark program, no errors.

I am pressed to believe it's a software thing because none of the other PC games I play (all high demand) have the same error and the black bars start flashing during the Civ menu screens...when there's no reason at all for the GPU to be working hard.

 

[tokala]

Well, the card might be working hard because there's not much to do in the menu screen. If not reined in, if will render hundreds of fps.
There was an issue with Starcraft2, where this lead to overheating and locking up video cards.
Do you have Vsync enabled?