screen flashes black randomly

[redcheetah7]

Hey guys, completely new to the dolphin system so I apologize if I'm making an obvious mistake. I've checked google and these forums and have found nothing (although the solution may have been buried under all the "black screen" threads)

my problem: screen will flash black briefly, frequently, and randomly (usually once every 15 seconds). It feels roughly like what a power surge would do to lights. Everything else works perfectly and it wouldn't be that big of a deal if it wasn't so darn annoying.

I've tried about every setting I can find including running at a bunch of resolutions, vsynch, windowed mode and across three games (new super mario bros, zelda: wind waker and zelda: skyward sword) with no effect whatsoever. I even tried messing with settings on my graphics driver with no luck

specs:
windows 7 64 bit
dolphin 3.0-303 (same problem on 3.0)
intel sandy bridge i5 2500k @ 4.2 Ghz
nvidia gtx 570
8 Gb 2133 ddr3 ram

any help would be greatly appreciated

[NaturalViolence]

Sounds like a problem with the display, your video card, or your video drivers. Has this happened with any other applications?

[redcheetah7]

(01-02-2012, 11:31 PM)NaturalViolence Wrote: Sounds like a problem with the display, your video card, or your video drivers. Has this happened with any other applications?

No, this is the first time I've seen this. If no one else has experienced these things I'd guess the same thing. Anyone else using a similar build?

[NaturalViolence]

I am. And I can tell you that the only time I have ever seen anything like that was with xfb enabled (can't remember if it was real or virtual).

[redcheetah7]

O, sweet. Yeah turning on virtual increases the frequency of the flashes and causes some odd distortion at the bottom of the screen so I definitely see where you're coming from. Still, I have it disabled and the same problem. Am I really the only one that's ever had this problem?

[NaturalViolence]

Probably, but maybe not. Post screenshots of your settings.

[Evanjs]

(01-02-2012, 12:33 PM)redcheetah7 Wrote: Hey guys, completely new to the dolphin system so I apologize if I'm making an obvious mistake. I've checked google and these forums and have found nothing (although the solution may have been buried under all the "black screen" threads)

my problem: screen will flash black briefly, frequently, and randomly (usually once every 15 seconds). It feels roughly like what a power surge would do to lights. Everything else works perfectly and it wouldn't be that big of a deal if it wasn't so darn annoying.

I've tried about every setting I can find including running at a bunch of resolutions, vsynch, windowed mode and across three games (new super mario bros, zelda: wind waker and zelda: skyward sword) with no effect whatsoever. I even tried messing with settings on my graphics driver with no luck

specs:
windows 7 64 bit
dolphin 3.0-303 (same problem on 3.0)
intel sandy bridge i5 2500k @ 4.2 Ghz
nvidia gtx 570
8 Gb 2133 ddr3 ram

any help would be greatly appreciated

Same here, wasn't happening yesterday in rev 3.0-314, but I'm currently using 3.0-324 and I'm getting pretty much the exact same thing. Just wanted to post to say you're not the only one with the problem.
Specs
Dolphin Rev 3.0-314
iMac 27 inch mid 2011
Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2
2.93 GHz Intel Core i7 (Can't remember the model #)
ATi Radeon HD 5750 1GB VRAM
8GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM

[Evanjs]

So I just power cycled EFB Copies and there are no more black flashes. EFB Copies was disabled, so I enabled EFB copies to textures, and Skip EFB access from CPU was on so I turned it off, then started up a game and ran around a bit, and found no black flashes. Then I stopped the game, undid all the changes I made to my settings, and my game was running as it was originally, with no black screen. Hope this helps, or works at the least.

EDIT: Make sure EFB Copies are enabled. I finally narrowed it down and for some reason every time EFB Copies are disabled, once I enter/exit a room, the screen flashes black once or twice upon entrance, and then flashes frequently from thereon. In the game I'm currently playing, EFB Copies is better if it's set to textures, but try setting it to Textures and to RAM, because one should be better than the other depending on the game you're playing.

[redcheetah7]

Ok, they were significantly less frequent (once every 30 seconds or so) with skip EFB access to CPU and EFB copies to ram and cached. They are still guaranteed to happen within 5 seconds of loading a new screen (tested on new super mario bros and zelda: SS), but that's not a big deal.

I'm going to try using 314 if it doesn't have the problem

here are the graphics settings, is there anything else I should include?

[LordVador]

Have you tried to change your backend?